While this is true it doesn’t apply to this situation.
If she doesn’t want to have a child she can give it up for adoption or abort it. It’s her choice. She is under no obligation to be a parent.
She is however obligated to financial agreements she enters into. The idea that the landlord should ignore her accumulation of property and frivolous expenditures at his expense is ridiculous.
When I lost my job years ago the first thing I did was sell off my possessions to meet my financial obligations. The first thing I sold was my big screen TV and that was sold the same day I lost the job.
Based on what the op said she not only doesn’t intend to meet her obligations she’s going out of her way not to do so.
No, but add in other violations of the lease (painting without permission, unauthorized pets, etc.) and it becomes more likely a judge will sympathize with the landlord rather than the tenant. The more contract violations the easier it is to argue that it’s not just a matter of poverty.
But, again, I’d contact a lawyer for actual legal advice.
I’m pretty sure most people, even those who are pro-choice, would regard being short of the rent a reasonable reason to undergo an abortion or give a child up for adoption that you would have otherwise kept.
In legal terms, they may be a type of trespasser, but it’s different from, say, a person who just shows up living in your front yard one day. There are specific procedures for evicting a holdover tenant. If someone pitched a tent and started living in my front yard never having any agreement with me about it, I’m pretty sure I can just call the cops if they refuse to leave. Different kinds of trespassing.
Make sure you take screen shots of her social media showing off her spending. She may delete it if she thinks it will be used against her. What emails or documentation do you have about what to do about rent during the shutdown? Do you have anything where she says she’ll pay the rent as soon as she has the money? I would think that if a renter is spending money on luxury discretionary purchases rather than paying the rent, that would greatly help with getting her evicted even during the eviction moratorium.
It’s possible to acquire a big screen TV for cheap, like I did-- I’ve got one where the color washes out in a 5"x5" patch in the corner, which I bought off Craigslist for $70-- originally well over $400, I’m guessing, because it’s an Amazon smart TV.
Still, not something I’d do if my rent were in arrears.
I can’t believe that even with eviction moratoria in places in different municipalities for non-payment of rent during the pandemic, that you can’t evict someone for specific lease violations that have nothing to do with the pandemic, or finances. I mean, if someone isn’t keeping their place clean, and they’ve been sick with COVID-19 for three weeks, they may have been too sick to vacuum, and weak to walk the garbage out to the dumpster, so maybe they need a couple of weeks to clean up after they recover, then the apartment won’t be in violation anymore.
But if it’s normal state is in violation, I can’t believe that’s not grounds for eviction, pandemic or no. If she has pets she shouldn’t have, and fines are imposed, which she doesn’t pay, that may not be excusable the way non-payment of rent is.
The OP really needs to bring a lawyer into this. This is a tangled situation anyway, and the pandemic makes it worse.
Just because you didn’t intend to have a child doesn’t mean that you would choose to abort or give up one that was the result of a failure of contraception.
Seriously, do you really think being short of the rent would be sufficient reason to abort an accidental pregnancy?
You conveniently left out adoption. And yes, I think someone who uses birth control doesn’t want another child so adoption is a viable option. If she places more value on a manicure than her legal debts then a family who goes through a certification process to adopt would be a good thing.
Not in my state. Squatters like those that move in while you’re gone for the weekend still need to be legally evicted.
This is from one story on it.
It is hard to believe, but true. Come home and find squatters, chances are you are in for a court battle to get them out. In fact, you will have no lawful right to enter your home without permission of the squatters. That’s because police have no means of distinguishing lawful tenants or visitors from peaceful intruders.
“20 to 30 percent of the evictions we do are people that are actually not on the lease,” Deputy Paul Smith told News 5, explaining it is “not uncommon” for squatters to take over homes.
The News 5 report said people scout neighborhoods, searching for empty residences. They break in, change locks, and claim legal occupancy. Rightful owners or tenants must prove the squatters don’t belong.
Tenancy disputes are not criminal matters. They are civil disputes. This limits what cops can do, and successful squatters know how to work the system. Typically, one or more squatters tell police they were invited to live in the home by a previous tenant or by the home’s rightful owner. By Colorado law, that means they have rights to remain in the home unless and until their story can be disproved in court.
That notion also ignores the fact that abortions aren’t free - generally hundreds of dollars. If you don’t have the money for rent how would you have the money for an abortion?
Of course, not having the money is different than spending the money you do have on something other than the rent.
I don’t know anything about New Jersey law. But as a general matter:
A tenant that stays past the expiration of the lease with the consent of the landlord becomes a “tenant at will” (a/k/a a holdover tenant). Consent is demonstrated by the acceptance of rent money. A tenant at will will typically be a month-to-month lease and grants the tenant various rights (and give the landlord various obligations).
If the tenant stays without consent, he is typically a “tenant at sufferance”. Such a tenant must be evicted using the normal process, except that (at least in some states) a tenant at sufferance is not entitled to the various statutory notice requirements for an eviction. (For example, in Virginia --I think – the landlord must provide a tenant with a “pay or quit” notice and give the tenant five days to cure. The landlord does not need to give a tenant at sufferance any notice, he may simply file an eviction–a/ka/ unlawful detainer–action).
I have no idea what obligations the landlord has to maintain the property that is occupied by a tenant at sufferance, but I’m quite sure you can’t burn the house down to get them out. I assume, the obligations are more or less the same as any other tenant who is “eligible” to be evicted. As far as I know, the landlord must always pursue an unlawful detainer action against a tenant at sufferance. No state (again, to my knowledge) allows “self-help” evictions. I note that the law on this subject does not appear to contemplate a situation where evictions are prohibited by the courts, but I don’t think that changes anything.
(It’s entirely possible all that is wrong, but I’m pretty sure it’s generally right. I took a couple of landlord-tenant CLEs a while back and this is what I remember).
This sounds very urban legend-ish to me. I mean, some of it’s true I’m sure, but there’s a lot of false equivalency, and a lot of suggestion that there are organized people going around and doing this as a scam, which I’d need more evidence for. I mean, 20-30% not being on the lease doesn’t mean squatters broke into your house. I would think that most of them really are just roommates that were never added to the lease, and then the people on the lease moved out. Those people may not be on the lease, but it’s not surprising to me that they have some rights to an eviction process.
And it may be that some (small) number of people break into houses and then claim to have permission, and then potentially have to be evicted. But I’d want to see more evidence that this is some kind of organized and common thing. If it is, I hope they are prosecuting them for fraud and/or related offenses. I mean, it should not be difficult to prove if someone moved into my house while I’m gone that I never rented it out or have permission to anyone to stay there.
My landlord is serving notices of eviction to people immediately upon non-payment, in spite of the moratorium, and supposedly the reason is that if they don’t, when the moratorium ends, they can’t evict immediately anyone who doesn’t start up paying again. There’s gotta be some kind of intent to evict all along, or they lose the right to evict for non-payment. At least that was in a note that circulated recently.
The upshot is that you can apparently safely ignore eviction notices as long as the moratorium is in effect, but the day it ends, your obligation to pay resumes, and you will be assessed a prorated rate for the current month, due IMMEDIATELY.
Personally, I’ve been paying the full amount all along, because I can afford to, and I think it’s the right thing to do, and also, because I know I’ll be treated really well if I do.
There is nothing remotely absurd about adoption. What’s absurd is to raise a child you didn’t want and can’t afford because a condom broke… It’s not just absurd, it’s child abuse.
My parents raised a bunch of kids they didn’t plan on and couldn’t afford because the rhythm method failed. I find this thinking deeply offensive. By your reasoning, my parents should have put my siblings up for adoption.
So bottom line, OP is likely required not only to allow a tenant stay in his/her property, but is also expected to maintain said property including all typical maintenance and investments despite the tenant not paying a cent to OP for any of it. Am I hearing that correct?
What if OP were to sign a contract with another renter and existing tenant doesn’t leave. What happens then? Is OP now required to forgo the income from the new tenant to satisfy the old one? Cause face it, you can sue for whatever, you’re not getting a dime out of the one there now.