Is she able to pay ANY of her back rent? Or does she have anything she can sell or pawn?
I’m not a Florida attorney, so I’ll only address some general statements of the law that have been made that are wrong. Oral contracts are generally enforcable. The main exception is a contract covered by a state’s statute of frauds. In every state I am familiar with (and Florida is not one of them), an oral lease for a year or less is valid.
As unfair as it seems, this sounds like an oral sublease, and the tenant would be covered by the state’s forcible detainer/eviction statute. If you’ve been given accurate information about the eviction procedure, you’re getting off lightly. A tenant in a similar situation in Illinois couldn’t be evicted without an eviction lawsuit, which a clever tenant can string out for at least a month.
YMMV under Florida law.
Personally I’d dump her stuff on the lawn and change the locks regardless of the nuiances of the law. She obviously does not respect you or your wife enough to make good on her promises, and you are under no obligation to do so now either.
See http://www.cafelaw.com/renters.html for what appears to be a thorought discussion of Florida landlord tenant law.
As I expected, oral leases for less than a year are valid. The eviction information you have been given was somewhat accurate, but incomplete. Good luck.
On another note, I suggest that people who post here and give advice about serious issues should avoid guessing. If the OP had followed some of the advice here, he’d be violating the law and could have ended up liable to his deadbeat tenant.
…with bongmaster’s advice being the worst of the bunch.
From experience here…any attempt to claim she owes back rent will make her a defacto tenant/renter giving her many of the priveledges of that status.
In my experience, even a simple written agreement for x amount of rent and x% of bills (keep copies) can save you many headaches.
She is probably trying to operate under the premise of its just $50 here and $70 there…no biggies…
If you keep a rolling balance she is about 45 days behind on her bills. Do not let her claim she paid this month until LAST MONTH is paid in full…see where I’m going with this.
If she wants to play hardball, make a simple lease today. Specify a late charge, and get her with the program . IF she refuses, give her 30 days notice in writing today, make her sign/date it, and keep the original (give her a copy).
The police will probably not want to come out and force her out unless you pay the fee to get a court order. OTOH if you change the locks she won’t have much recourse to get police/sherrif to help her beyond letting her go in and grab her stuff.
Whatever you do…do not just dump her stuff outside. You can be held responsible for damages/loss to her belongings in many jurisdictions.
Thank you Random. It is nice to see someone with the facts post. Oral contract not valid indeed…you don’t have to be a lawyer to know that is wrong.
Yes, keep her stuff safe and not on the lawn.
However, if someone is not paying their share of the rent, I would change the locks and put her stuff in the storage area. Yes, she may have ‘rights’ like 30 days free rent but I would be damned if she would get it from me. She would have to take ME to court, not the other way around!
Even if she somehow manged to convince me that she had the right stay, she gets the kitchen floor to sleep, not some bedroom. The new, paying roommate gets the bedroom. If she threatened in any way or even hinted that she might think about threatening, she is out immediately for my and others protection from this violent person.
This is pure BS, plain and simple. She’s not taking money from deap pockets here but from people very close to the edge. ‘rights’ to an extra free 30 days be damned!
Good advice on the first and last months rent, btw along with the informal but written contract about having 30 days to leave after the first time rent not paid in full.
Well like it or not you don’t get to anything to a tenant unless you have gone through the steps…no you cant make them sleep on the kitchen floor.
Generally speaking the lease protects the landlord, the law protects the tenant. If you try to do anything to terrorize, harass, threaten or inconvenience this person in any way you are begging for a lawsuit you will probably lose. $600 she owes is still a DIRT CHEAP lesson in these matters. I had to take out a small personal loan ($1500) to save my ass when I went through this with someone renting a room in my house. These laws are a good thing and prevent landlords from booting you the minute you have a bad month or lose a job and need a few weeks to get another.
Amen. I do not know if it is me or what but I see more and more misinformation on this board as time goes by.
I have been a landlord and been to Landlord and Tenant Court a number of times. I am not a lawyer but I believe the most common situation is that you cannot kickout a person out of their residence without going to court first. A person who has been living there for some time has established residence even if they are guests or even squatters. If they owe rent then there is absolutely no doubt that the place is their residence.
Kick someone out without legal authorisation and you can be in some pretty deep shit.
She would call the police who would force you to let her back in, she has just as much legal right to be there as you do until you go through the steps. IIRC you can refuse…plan on the police testifying at her hearing for an illegal eviction that you refused to allow her back and go through the proper legal steps. If you ever evict someone this way give me a call so I can bring popcorn for the court case.
I understand your POV all too well unfortunately you are not innocent until proven guilty…the tenant is.
Let her go ahead and do that then.
I’m sorry to come off so huffy here but when deadbeats do things like this it really gets me in a huff. People run so scared of lawsuits and others are so good at manipulating this fear that someone acting rationally (like kicking their deadbeat butt out) it comes off as ‘extreme’.
Now all that being said, your point of the lease protecting the roommates and the law protecting the tenents makes sense. I would never enter a roommate relationship without something on paper documenting the ground rules.
However, I get the impression the OP is very young, say under 23 and I would never have had the savy knowledge at that age and routinely entered into these verbal, informal contracts. A roommate situation at that age should not be subject to the strapped roomated having to foot the bill for a deadbeat and I think the judge would take that into account.
Unfortunately everyone is an adult and really not a really complex legal situation the eviction times are a pretty much carved in stone thing. Now…the landlord DOES have a right to sue for back rent/bills after the fact including interest and or court costs… That is where you make it painful for the tenant. You go through the steps, the law turns against the tenant…
I started a Pit thread on this, though it probably should be in Debates.
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=145685
drachillix: “If she wants to play hardball, make a simple lease today. Specify a late charge, and get her with the program . IF she refuses, give her 30 days notice in writing today, make her sign/date it, and keep the original (give her a copy).”
With all due respect, make her sign it? How? What possible incentive would she have to sign anything that might work against her in any way?
advice: file a claim against her in small claims court immediately for back rent. include the cost of having her evicted.
next, evict her. any agreement with her to stay will only delay the inevitable.
If she refuses all of the above tack a copy to her bedroom door and have a friend sign that he witnessed you doing so. If you have ever been late on your rent you might see something similar on your door.
That will cover legal notification to the tenant.
I find it ironic that the same verbal contract that would protect this roommate in particular wouldn’t be considered broken due to the lack of payments and thus automatically voided. The law isn’t perfect of course. It can’t be. I just wish that money didn’t play such an important role in it.
To answer a couple questions I have read: I will be 23 in a few weeks and I have lived in the U.S for almost a year now.
Back to the issue at hand. It seems that said roommate took her food out of thouse. A sign that she’s resigned to leave I suppose. Now, to hope that we do get a new roommate before december first. (any advice on where to post ads?) It seems that the most renowned webpages dealing with the subject require that the tenant or the aspiring roommate to pay a fee to be able to contact each other. O free internet, where art thou?
On another note, it puzzles me that she started with the food. I always leave that for last if I’m moving.