You cannot change a tenant into a guest just by changing what you call that person in your agreement. If the issue ever came into court, the court would look at what is really happening, not just what the person was called in the agreement.
If you have a written agreement that a person is a tenant for a certain period of time, you will probably need to follow the procedures for evicting a tenant.
This is true even if the time in the agreement is now over. Whether an employee is a tenant depends on the specific agreement between the employee and employer. A person does not become a tenant just because he or she has lived in a property for a long time.
If you and another person are co-tenants on the lease because you both signed the lease as tenants, you will both have an equal right to live in the property in most cases. Co-tenants usually cannot evict each other, even if one of the co-tenants stops paying the rent or is violating the lease that they both signed.
If the person you want to evict is not a tenant, but is a household member or authorized occupant, you may be able to evict that person. You will need to figure out whether that person is your tenant or is a guest. If you are receiving a housing subsidy, you may want to talk to a lawyer to make sure you are following the rules of your subsidy program. If you are not sure whether the person you want to evict is a tenant or not, you should talk to a lawyer before you decide what to do next.
The safest way to remove a guest from your property is to use the court process. There are several reasons why it may be a bad idea to use self-help eviction to remove a guest from your home. You may be risking your personal safety if the guest becomes angry or violent during or after the eviction. If the police need to be called because the eviction is causing a disturbance, they may stop the eviction and direct you to let the guest move back into your home. The police may also direct you to go to court to evict the guest.
In many cases, you cannot be sure whether a person is a guest or a tenant. If you are wrong and a judge decides that your guest actually is a tenant, you may be ordered to let that person move back into your home and you might have to pay that person money for wrongfully evicting him or her.
Judgments for wrongful eviction can be a large amount of money and can include: reimbursement for living costs while the guest was out of the property, lost or stolen personal property, pain and suffering, and, if the tenant can prove that you acted recklessly or maliciously, additional damages to punish you for the illegal eviction.
Even though a guest is not a tenant, you can still file an eviction case in the Landlord and Tenant Branch of D. Superior Court. The Landlord and Tenant Branch is eviction court, and you do not have to be a landlord to file a case to evict someone. You do not have to use the Landlord and Tenant Branch, but it is usually the fastest way to get a judgment to remove a person from your property.
A sample complaint and summons filled out for a case like yours is included in the Self-Help Packet. If the filing fee will be a hardship to you, you can ask the court to waive your filing fees by completing an Application to Proceed without Prepayment of Costs and Fees.
Click here for help completing this form. After you file the Complaint and Summons, you will need to have someone over the age of 18 serve the papers. Instructions for serving the papers are included in this Self-Help Packet.
The person who serves the guest needs to fill out an Affidavit of Service that explains how the papers were given to the guest. See the sample complaint in the Self-Help Packet for an example. You are usually not required to give a guest a day notice, no matter how long that person has lived in your home. The Residential Landlord-Tenant Act in Washington State does not specifically entitle tenants to a grace period of any kind. If the grace period passes and you have not paid your rent in full, your landlord can serve you with a day pay or vacate notice and issue a late fee.
Your landlord does not have to accept partial payments for rent during the fourteen day timeline, though they may choose to. If your landlord accepts money after issuing the notice, document the payment in writing, because in some situations but not all it may invalidate their eviction notice. If you negotiate a payment plan be sure to put the agreed amounts to be paid in writing, and document that all eviction proceedings will cease.
Payment in full within the fourteen days is the best assurance to stop the eviction from moving forward, though it is still possible that your landlord will proceed with the lawsuit on an unlawful basis. The day notice is to be served to you, or a person of suitable age and discretion in your household, in person, or posted on your door and sent to you in the mail.
Incorrect service in and of itself does not invalidate an eviction action against you, though it may become a defense in your eviction. It is likely if payment is not received in full within the day timeline, and the tenant does not vacate the unit within 14 days, that the landlord will proceed to eviction court.
The worst thing a tenant can do is ignore the notice or not communicate with the landlord about the notice or their inability to pay the rent. Negotiation with your landlord can sometimes be helpful. But if the landlord hears nothing from the tenant, they may assume that their only recourse is to file an eviction lawsuit.
If you are not able to pay the rent you owe, you do have the option of vacating the unit within the fourteen day timeline. This will prevent the landlord from taking you to eviction court, and you will avoid having an eviction lawsuit on your record. For information on how evictions can impact your ability to find rental housing, see Housing Search. However, even if you vacate within fourteen days, you still owe your landlord the rent money and your landlord can still sue you for the amount of rent and legal fees, or possibly send you to collections in order to recover that money.
Keeping documentation of all your rent payments is crucial to protect yourself against wrongful eviction. Paying rent into a drop box, or paying in cash without receiving a receipt from the landlord can leave a tenant vulnerable to claims that the money was lost or never received. Pay your rent by personal check whenever possible. Sometimes it can take months for the money order company to recover documentation of the amount if you request it, often too long before the eviction process concludes.
Your landlord should provide you with a receipt upon your request, or prepare a receipt to have the landlord sign and date. If you pay in cash, the landlord must automatically issue you a receipt under RCW You can also ask a third party witness to come with you who can attest that the rent was delivered and received. The landlord may serve a day notice to comply or vacate to a tenant who is violating or accused of violating a section of the rental agreement. The notice should list which section of the rental agreement is being violated, and give the tenant 10 days to come into compliance with that section.
If the tenant is not complying after the day timeframe, the landlord may proceed with the eviction process. The notice expires after 60 days under RCW It is important for tenants to respond to the day notice in writing stating that they are or will be in compliance with the rental agreement. It is a good idea to include all written documentation possible to support the claim.
For example, if your landlord sends you a day notice to remove unauthorized pets from the unit, you can send the landlord a letter explaining the situation and documentation to show how you are in compliance. That date cannot be less than 10 days from the day the Order for Possession is issued. If you haven't moved by the date set forth in the Order for Possession a constable or sheriff's deputy will forcibly remove you at that time.
Your landlord must give you a written eviction notice before he or she can start a legal action to evict you, unless you have a written lease and the lease says what kind of an eviction notice, if any, the landlord must give you.
If the eviction is NOT for failure to pay rent, the landlord must give you 15 days notice if the lease is for 1 year or less, and 30 days notice if the lease is for more than 1 year. If the eviction is for nonpayment of rent, the landlord must give you 10 days notice. Remember, a written lease can waive or change these notice requirements. The notice must be in writing and given to you in person or by posting on the door of your residence. The notice must give the reason for eviction.
If there is no written lease, the reason for eviction can be simply that the landlord has decided not to renew the lease. Tenants who commit or are reasonably suspected of committing crimes may have an especially short time window to move out. If you pay rent more often than once a month in a month-to-month tenancy, however, some states allow you to give a shorter period of notice that matches the interval at which you pay rent.
Some leases and rental agreements have specific rules about the date on which a tenant can provide notice, so you should check to see whether this type of rule applies to you.
Yes, a landlord can evict you for being late on rent. This usually will result in a Pay Rent or Quit notice, which means that you need to pay what you owe or move. If you do neither, the landlord can start the eviction process. If you have repeatedly failed to pay rent on time, and especially if you have received a previous Pay Rent or Quit notice, you may be at risk of receiving an Unconditional Quit notice based on failing to pay rent.
This means that you do not have the opportunity to pay what you owe and are required to move. However, if the landlord accepts a partial payment of the rent, this likely will negate the existing Pay Rent or Quit notice.
The landlord would need to start over with a new notice if they want to collect the remaining rent. Yes, a landlord can evict you if there is no lease. If there is no written lease, it is possible that you have an oral agreement based on a verbal understanding with the landlord.
This oral agreement and its terms will be valid and enforceable if the lease period is one year or less. If there is no lease, either written or oral, a landlord still can evict you. This is because the lack of a lease means that you are in a month-to-month tenancy at will and must pay rent on a monthly basis, or more frequently if you have an agreement to that effect. However, a landlord generally must provide notice of terminating your tenancy.
A landlord cannot legally evict you without a court order, whether or not you have a lease. A landlord can evict a tenant only by going through a formal eviction proceeding, which can take a few weeks from start to finish.
Depending on the type of termination notice that the landlord sends, the eviction process might not even start for a week or more after the tenant gets the notice. Or it might be expedited if you are alleged to have engaged in serious misconduct, such as committing a crime or posing a safety risk.
This can give you extra time to plan a move if you believe that the eviction may go through. Once a landlord gets a judgment of eviction, however, the process tends to move very quickly.
The sheriff or marshal will probably come to remove you within a few days if you have not left before then. Grounds for getting an eviction stopped or postponed are limited and usually require proof of an extreme hardship. Yes, a landlord can sue for back rent after an eviction. This is a debt that you owe the landlord. If the security deposit does not cover the full amount of back rent or property damage that you caused, however, the landlord can go to small claims court to get a judgment for the rest of it.
You should make sure to participate in this proceeding to avoid having a default judgment entered against you, which can harm your credit rating. You may even be able to convince the judge or the landlord to let you pay the back rent in installments or compromise on a lesser amount.
Yes, you can sue a landlord for injuries that you suffer in an accident on the premises. This means that the landlord was responsible for the area where the accident occurred or the issue that caused the accident, but they failed to take reasonable care in addressing it. The accident also must have been a foreseeable result.
You can potentially get compensation for your medical bills, lost income and earning capacity, costs of future treatment, pain and suffering, emotional distress, and other losses, especially if the injury is serious or permanent. However, you should be aware that your compensation award may be reduced if you were also partly responsible for causing the accident. In some egregious, less common situations, a landlord may act recklessly or intentionally in causing injuries to a tenant.
This may support an award of punitive damages in addition to compensatory damages, although the availability of punitive damages depends on state law. A landlord is often responsible for damaged property. You would need to show that they created the condition that caused the property damage, such as by failing to make major repairs when needed. If you caused the condition that resulted in the property damage, however, the landlord will not be responsible. Specific rules apply to property that is left behind after a tenant moves out.
0コメント