You arrive home to find a note on your apartment door notifying you of your eviction. As far as you know, you did not violate your lease. To understand your confusing situation, familiarize yourself with conditions under which landlords can legally evict tenants.
Types of Termination Notices
There are three common types of termination notices landlords use when tenants violate a lease agreement. If you fail to pay rent, your landlord can ask that you either pay the outstanding rent or vacate the premises within three to five days through a pay rent or quit notice. With a cure or quit notice, your landlord seeks to evict you due to a lease violation such as making too much noise or housing a pet when your lease forbids them. Illegal activity, repeated lease violations, seriously damaging the unit, and frequently paying your rent late warrant an unconditional quit notice, which means that you have no recourse regarding paying late rent or correcting the agreement.
Termination Without Cause
Unfortunately, there are situations in which landlords can legally evict tenants without wrongdoing as long as the tenant does not have a fixed-term lease. For instance, your landlord can serve you with a 30- to a 60-day notice to vacate without a legal reason. With a termination without cause, your landlord has to give you an adequate notice period. That means that even if you receive a lease termination without cause notice, you could have a legal case if your landlord only gives you 14 days to move out.
Eviction Lawsuits
You may stand your ground and refuse to leave your unit if you feel that the eviction is unwarranted. Know that your landlord can serve you with a summons and complaint for eviction as the next step of the eviction process. At that point, you’ll have a date and time to go before a judge like Judge Mike Tawil to plead your case. You must appear at this hearing if you don’t want the judge to rule against you. Your appearance is especially vital if you have a case against your landlord.
Tenant Defenses
Once you and your landlord go to court, you have defense options to shoot down your landlord’s case. Perhaps your landlord does a poor job of maintaining your unit and the rest of the property. Or, you may feel that the eviction is retaliation for you making reasonable repair or maintenance requests. Consider having a lawyer look over the eviction lawsuit paperwork, as your landlord may have skipped a few vital steps in preparing the lawsuit.
Sheriff’s Escort
Even if your landlord wins in court, her or his legal obligations do not end there. Your landlord must next hand over the court judgment to the sheriff or other local law enforcement and pay a fee. Next, law enforcement sends you a notice that they’ll be by in the next few days to escort you out of your unit and off the property.
Know when a landlord crosses the legal line while attempting to evict you.
