Am I legally responsible to pay in Summer?

coheedcollapse · #1 07-18-2007, 11:21 PM

What is the name of your state? Indiana.

Ok, I'll make this as brief as possible.

Last year before school started, two friends who were planning on living with me ditched out and decided that they wouldn't be living at/attending school so I had to rush to find someone to live with.

Upon placing an ad requesting a place to live for only the 1st and 2nd semesters (Fall and Spring), I received multiple responses and in the end chose to live in a house with three other guys.

They had already signed the lease for the year, so they requested that I look over the lease and do whatever so that I can get on there. I made it clear to them that I wouldn't be attending during the summer, therefore I wouldn't be paying for rent during those times.

Flash forward to three months into Summer. One of them calls me asking that I pay my part of the rent..apparently totally forgetting the multiple conversations that we had about the fact that I would not be carrying any responsibilities during the summer.

Now...on to the legal part. I was thinking to myself that if I did sign this year-long lease, that if they decided to flake out on me I wouldn't legally be able to get out of it...so....I didn't sign the lease. It does appear, however, that my initials are added on to the pages and that my name is scrawled on to the list of tenants...however the signature box only includes the three that lived there originally before I joined.

Question is: Am I legally responsible for my part, or can I show them the photocopied lease and point out that my signature is obviously not on there? We have a family lawyer and I'm willing to get a written response from him, but I figured I'd test the waters here before I got him into it.

ecmst12 · #2 07-19-2007, 12:12 AM

Did you get an agreement in writing from the other tenants that you would only be paying rent until the end of the spring semester? If not, you'll have a hard time proving that they agreed to this. You didn't sign the lease, so the landlord can't come after you for the unpaid rent, but the roommates certainly could try to sue you.

JustAPal00 · #3 07-19-2007, 12:40 AM

My sister had the same problem her sophmore year. Her roomates sued her and won! She had no proof of the verbal agreement to only rent for the school year. She wasn't on the original lease but had a verbal agreement to sub for a girl that was on the lease! That girl had to take a year off school for some reason.

coheedcollapse · #4 07-19-2007, 02:43 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ecmst12

Did you get an agreement in writing from the other tenants that you would only be paying rent until the end of the spring semester? If not, you'll have a hard time proving that they agreed to this. You didn't sign the lease, so the landlord can't come after you for the unpaid rent, but the roommates certainly could try to sue you.

Unfortunately, I didn't have the foresight to get that written consent. My roommates didn't seem flaky at all, so I trusted them to remember and not come back to me when they needed help with the rent. Apparently, toward the end of the year, two of my roommates owed the third over $1000 each. Ouch.

Fortunately, though, I couldn't really see any of them taking legal action against me. I'm really trying to keep this civil, but I really don't have the money to throw away on something that I positively agreed on earlier in the year even before I moved in. I'll update you guys on what happens hopefully.

Thanks!

coheedcollapse · #5 07-27-2007, 04:49 PM

Ok. The landlord got in touch with me and left me a threatening voicemail and as a response I got back to him and contacted my lawyer. He didn't call my on my cell phone, but instead got my old roommate to call me while he was there so he could trick me into answering.

Long story short, in this conversation he refused to speak to my lawyer at any time, and after some speaking he told me to have him contact him by mail. Is it legal for him to refuse to speak to my lawyer if he's threatening suit against me?

CA LL · #6 07-27-2007, 04:53 PM

Umm..."real" attorneys do not typically "speak" to potential defendents.

The LL does not have to "speak" to your attorney. Real attorneys who represent clients typically do not SPEAK to anyone on behalf of their clients....THEY DO THINGS IN WRITING.

So not sure what "attorney" you are using...but they don't appear to be playing by the customary attorney playbook LOL.

The LL is correct..any further correspondence now that you have threatened 'attorney' s/b in writing.

Do you not see lack of written documentation is what got you here in the first place. You DO owe for summer - there is nothing you have to prove otherwise.

Druchalla · #7 07-28-2007, 03:45 PM

Just one question that might make or break the case either way....

Do you have any of your 'stuff' in the unit? A lot, a little, just a few items... it doesn't matter. If you do then you need to pay rent. It doesn't matter if you (your body) is there or not.

If none of your stuff is there at all then you might, just might, be able to convince a judge that there was a verbal agreement for you not to pay during the summer.

Druchalla

LindaP777 · #8 07-29-2007, 09:41 PM

Good points, Druchalla. I would also like to point out that if you totally moved out for the summer, they could rent the room to someone else. That someone else may choose to stay over in the fall quarter, leaving you scrambling for housing once again. If you wanted them to hold the spot for you, best paid them through the summer.

coheedcollapse · #9 07-30-2007, 04:19 AM

There is literally nothing of mine in the apartment. No furniture, no supplies, no utensils...nothing. I don't know if I'm going to go any further with this. It's just too much of a hassle for some stupid money.

I'm not ever going back there, and although I really would like to go with what was planned from the beginning of the school year, I've found out through a bit of research that in Indiana even without a signature if the landlord has any form of payment from me on file it's considered an agreement of the earlier contract or something like that.

That, and after examining that lease I found out that if the landlord decides to sue me I have to pay for his attorney fees and whatever else he needs for the suit.

Luckily I'm not going to be going back to the city next year and even if I were I would never live with these guys again. The whole agreement was decided on a lie (they said they never partied/smoked...wild parties every weekend, smoked inside at least once a week, also loud techno-bass music every day, pot growing, and random rotting food everywhere...but that's off topic) and the room that they gave me was more of a closet...I actually had to walk through another roommate's room to get to it.

On another note, CA LL, the attorney that I was speaking to is a close family friend and he was doing it gratis. I didn't hire him, but asked him if he could try to do anything about it (I wasn't going to go as far as to taking my ex-roommates to court...too much work for such a stupid thing.)

Also, the landlord, as right as he is legally about things being in writing, sort of violated his own rule. He contacted me first threatening suit (the threatening call that I mentioned consisted of him screaming at me about payment and a process in which he'd sue me and make me pay all of the legal fees). He followed this threat with the sneaky phone call from my roommate.

Quote:

Do you not see lack of written documentation is what got you here in the first place. You DO owe for summer - there is nothing you have to prove otherwise.

Yeah. It sucks that it works one way, but not the other way. I have a lease without my signature and although he does have one or two checks from me (the others went to one of my roommates which in turn paid my landlord) that by Indiana law somehow mean consent to the original lease, the fact that all of my stuff is gone and an old message that states that I'm going to be staying only for the school year isn't enough proof to get me out of it. It sucks that I can't just trust people to hold up their end of a verbal agreement. Life would be easier without flaky people.

Sorry for the ramble. Thanks everyone for being so helpful! I'll update here if anything changes!

coheedcollapse · #10 07-30-2007, 07:09 PM

Ok one last question. I'm traveling down to the city to camp with some friends this weekend and since I'm roped in on paying that rent I plan on stopping by just to check out the place and show my friends where I lived during the school year. Now, say I get there and someone (one of my roomate's friends or otherwise) is living in the room that they made me pay for, would I be able to do something about that because I could definitely see it happening.