acm
07-11-2008, 03:05 PM
Our recently evicted tenants (just over a month ago) left without providing a forwarding address and without giving the post office notice of their address change (I'm assuming that this was to prevent us from going after them for past due rent, late charges, attorney fees, and the weekly pickup of garbage from their yard that we had to do).
When cleaning out the apartment after they left, we checked the mailbox. Guess what - their economic stimulus check was inside. It is now in our possession, untampered with, and safely stored away (they don't answer our calls and remember, left no forwarding address). We've heard nothing from them until today, when they left a nasty message on my husband's cell phone accusing us of taking the check and threatening us (my husband listened to the message, then deleted it, thinking he could look up the number in his phone memory). Their cell number is restricted so we can't call them back. (Not that we really want to anyway, they never returned our calls when we were trying to get them to pay their rent.)
As a landlord, what are our obligations here? I think I will go after them for the past due amounts in court. My thought is to tell them to send a self-addressed, stamped envelope. That way we at least have their address. My husband wants to do nothing and let them wait for a new check. We also just found out they have another judgement against them for past rent, so we're not sure we'd be able to collect if we won the judgement.
Why do people think it's ok to sign a rental agreement, then not pay? Do they have no morals?
When cleaning out the apartment after they left, we checked the mailbox. Guess what - their economic stimulus check was inside. It is now in our possession, untampered with, and safely stored away (they don't answer our calls and remember, left no forwarding address). We've heard nothing from them until today, when they left a nasty message on my husband's cell phone accusing us of taking the check and threatening us (my husband listened to the message, then deleted it, thinking he could look up the number in his phone memory). Their cell number is restricted so we can't call them back. (Not that we really want to anyway, they never returned our calls when we were trying to get them to pay their rent.)
As a landlord, what are our obligations here? I think I will go after them for the past due amounts in court. My thought is to tell them to send a self-addressed, stamped envelope. That way we at least have their address. My husband wants to do nothing and let them wait for a new check. We also just found out they have another judgement against them for past rent, so we're not sure we'd be able to collect if we won the judgement.
Why do people think it's ok to sign a rental agreement, then not pay? Do they have no morals?