Small Claims Court...

Factual Questions
1

(In Dallas)

So my roommate abandons the lease, leaving me to pay the whole rent (much more than I can really afford) and his parents (who handle his finances) refuse to pay for his rent at my apartment. We are both listed on the lease and we are thus equally liable for the rent of $1250.

I’m seriously thinking of taking him to court and trying to get the other half of the rent.

Do I have a case? Can I make him pay all of it in advance? Do I have to try and make him pay monthly? He doesn’t have a job, but he has a trust fund…can I go after that or are they just going to try to garnish his non-existant wages?

2

When you say you’re both on the lease, did he actually sign a document with the land lord to put himself on the lease? Or did you just put his name on when you got the place? If he signed it, I say you have a case. I used to live in a bigger house and rented out a smaller one. (I sold the bigger house, pocketed the profit, and now live in the smaller one). But I had a couple where the boyfriend split leaving the gal with the bills. She successfully got a judge to make him pay.

I know nothing of Texas law, but here in WI I’ve used small claims court lots of times for many different things and won. (I don’t take sh*t from anyone!). The small claims court system actually works pretty well (in my opinion) and with the exception of a couple of boring forms is quite easy to do.

3

Oh yes, he is most definitely on the lease! His signature is on the lease big as life and twice as ugly.

I’ve never used small claims before, but it doesn’t look very hard on TV…

4

You will be expected to cut your losses which in your case will mean moving to a cheaper place. He will have to pay his half of penalties for breaking the lease and maybe half of one months rent.

I learned that watching TV!!!

5

the thing is that they want the concessions paid before I can move out. The concessions totalled $2800 and I was not living in the apartment at the time, so it is actually cheaper for me to stay in this apartment than to try to leave because the total cost of moving even to another place in the complex would be $4100.

Am I still expected to leave the apartment?

6

You will be expected (by the Court) to have taken steps to prevent the debt from getting bigger. Leavin the apartment for a smaller apartment is one such step. If you can explain why that would be difficult, the Court may accept it. But would then expect you to have taken some other steps. Like getting a different roommate to share the expenses. Have you done that?

If you just continued to live by yourself in this large apartment, and want your ex-roommate to pay half the costs, a Court isn’t going to be very happy about that.

7

this is EXACTLY what happened to me. Well, a little different, but we won’t go into details. I paid his backrent. Then since I couldn’t afford to continue living there alone, I paid the penalty to move out early. I got my full deposit back (made sure the check went to me. At one point he called the apts and had them send it to him, luckily I had called them before they sent it out and switched it back). I then sued him for the FULL amount I paid. I knew if it went to court I wouldn’t get all that, but I figured, what the hell, might as well scare him on paper and see if he pays up. It did go to court and I was awarded half of everything, minus half the deposit. All in all, if came out fair, just a real pain in the ass. BTW make sure you keep everything, Any checks you write (at least carbons, don’t pay for cancelled checks unless you really need to), recepits, EVERYTHING. You’ll have to prove that you paid his part. Also, if possible get a signed letter from the landlord stating any money that they received for any months in question, or penelties and who the check was from.

8

A little knowledge is a dangerous thing. (Here we go, yet again, with people who don’t know what they’re talking about answering legal questions. Sorry if I seem testy, but this has happened 87 times before, and it gets tiring spending more time correcting misinformation than actually saying something useful. Honestly, the annoyance level of this is getting as bad as the missing dollar and gry threads.)

What t-bonham and herman (who gathered his so-called information “by watching TV!”) are misdescribing is the duty of a plaintiff to mitigate his damages. (If someone breaches a contract that you have with him, you can’t stand idle and let your damages accumulate. You have to take reasonable steps to mitigate, or limit your damages. In a lease setting, this means that a landlord can’t just let an apartment stay vacant after a tenant moves out halfway though a lease term. He has to take some reasonable steps to re-let the apartment. That duty (of the landlord) doesn’t kick in here. There’s still a tenant, and he therefore can’t relet. If both moved out, it would kick in, but that’s a foolish step for the OP to take. If the landlord can’t relet (and nothing forces him to relet this apartment first, if he has others that are vacant), OP is on the hook for the whole unpaid rent.

Here, two tenants apparently signed a lease, making each of them jointly responsible for the entire rent. One vacated early, and refuses to pay his share. The other is on the hook. t-b and herman claim that this means that the other tenant must breach his lease contact, too. t-b and herman are wrong. That would just make the OP a defendant, and ultimately a judgment debtor. The duty to mitigate never forces you to breach a contract. t-bonham’s second thought is closer to the mark. The OP might be required to mitigate by trying to find a replacement roommate.

Essentially, Roommate A and Roommate B have an oral contract, which might be considered a partnership agreement, to rent the apartment together and share the costs. In my opinion, the OP can sue in small claims for breach of this agreement.

The OP asks some good questions here. A court might make you wait until the end of the lease to assess full damages. (Leases have acceleration clauses to deal with this problem. Your oral contract with roomie doesn’t.) Also, collecting any judgment that you may get may be difficult. Trusts are often set up specifically to make the trust assets immune from creditors. Anything that’s actually paid to him is fair game, though.

Usual disclaimers. While IAAL, I’m not one in your state. I’m not your lawyer, and you’re not my client. This response provides general information, and is not intended to be legal advice to be relied upon in your specific situation. See a lawyer licensed in your state for that.

9

(Nothing in my previous response was meant to apply to Joey, who accurately describes the way it could play out in court.) The OP can choose to pay a penalty and move out early, if the landlord offers this option, but neither the OP nor the landlord are forced to take this route.

10

Thanks very much for the information Random. I think that I can easilly show that moving to another apartment is not a feasible alternative. I have also offered to find a roommate if they would help me with the rent temporarily. All of my offers have been refused and so this is a last resort.

One more question, how long does it typically take to schedule a court date? I realize that I will find this out tommorow when I file, I’m just curious.