Please give me some advice?

Question

me my bf and my best friend rented a house together, all of us were on the lease. after about a month my friend moved back home. we told her we would find a replacement for her asap and that she would have to pay rent until then, she agreed to this. meanwhile we could NOT find anyone to move in no matter what we did. anyway about six weeks since she moved bacl i saw her when she told me she had stopped paying rent 3 weeks earlier. i was like what? she reckons she messaged my bf (which he never received by the way) saying we had "four weeks notice" to find someone and she would stop paying rent after that. she cant do that can she?? we called the real estate and they said they had to have the money by the following day so stupidly we paid it. is there anything we can do to get her money? me and my bf have since moved out of that house but are still paying rent for it until the realestate can get new tenants so me and my bf have been covering her share. what are our options?

Answer 1

hey u need not to keep friendship to such a person..........

u just stop paying the rent& better u look afer some other place.........

Answer 2

legally you can take her to small claims court for what she owes.

Answer 3

Your question is a legal question best left to a judge (small claims court) or attorney depending on the amount you are seeking in a judgement. Usually verbal agreements are not binding. Let this be a lesson to you about friendships and that written contracts and modifications are of paramount importance. With that said, you and your boyfriend should get something in writing on a "what if" clause to your relationship so you don't have to go through this all over again. If marriages fail, any kind of relationship could fail. If it doesn't that's awesome... if it does, you're both protected. You can chase your money or just strike it up as experience, vowing never to co-sign or co-anything with anyone EVER again!!!

Answer 4

First, write a letter to your landlord stating that you do not consent to your "best friend" being removed from the lease.  She is a party to the original agreement and cannot arbitrarily decide to remove herself from the agreement without the other parties agreeing.  You made a good faith effort to re-rent the unit, she should make an effort to find her own replacement or at least offer some other settlement.

The three of you are obligated to pay the rent to the landlord.  However, the landlord does not care how the rent is divided and in many rental agreements each resident is individually responsible for the entire agreement.  So you and your boyfriend were correct to pay the rent.  If you had not fully paid, the landlord would have eventually evicted all of you regardless of who did or did not pay.

The landlord is not going to resolve your internal resident problem.  You and your boyfriend need to pay the rent and take action to collect from your former "best friend".  Send her a collection letter via Certified Mail and file a claim against her in small claims.  A small claims judge will likely find in favor of you sense you have a signed lease with her.

Answer 5

"...stupidly we paid it..." You are required by law to pay it. "Wisely" you paid it.

Your options are to sue her for her share. But you made a committment to get a new roomie, which you failed to do. From what I've seen a judge will usually award three months max to give the landlord the incentive to re-rent.

If the time period was open-ended a landlord would never bother. This is why when you want an early-out on a lease this is the high-end. This is the longest your landlord should expect from you, as well.