charcolatta
Junior Member
What is the name of your state (only U.S. law)? New Mexico
Around July of last year we moved into a trailer house that was offered to us to buy with the condition of no receipts for payments due to the landlord being in an offer to compromise with IRS for not paying business taxes so he wouldn't have to give all the monies to the IRS and payments needed to be cash. The other condition was that we would not be able to get financing on the place until the offer to compromise was up sometime around June this year. For all July 2014 and the first half of August we were unable to contact the owner to pay our payments. Well on August 18th at about 10am we got a call from a guy that lives with us that the constable was at our house giving us notice that we must vacate the premises by midnight. Come to find out that he had been to court and got a default judgment and won the eviction for nonpayment of rent. We never received any notice, by mail, on the door, in person, NOTHING. He said in court that he hired a company to serve notice and posted it on our door and mailed a copy to us. This did not happen Or the notices were intercepted before we saw them. Obviously so we were not be able to defend ourselves in court. Well what's done is done as far as we have already moved out. We went to court after being evicted to be allowed to retrieve the rest of our belonging that we were unable to take due to the time allowed, we were given 4 days to remove our items. Can I sue him for not giving proper notice after the fact. The attorney that we hired to get us the time to get our belongings got a copy of the notice and it was only to 1 of the 5 people living there, which from what I understand is not acceptable, all tenants must be notified. Because we were under the understanding that we would be buying the place we dealt with many problems with the property like, no running water, sewer gases escaping into the kitchen, no working air conditioning,& illegal wiring in the back of the trailer that later caused a fire and made 3 rooms of the house have no electricity. I just cant let him get away with this with no consequences but I spent all my savings on the attorney to get back into the property to retrieve the rest of our belongings and to rent a place to live. I cant prove that he didn't give us notice but he cant prove that we got notice either because not one of us was notified of a court date to try to defend ourselves. Can I do anything in small claims court?
Around July of last year we moved into a trailer house that was offered to us to buy with the condition of no receipts for payments due to the landlord being in an offer to compromise with IRS for not paying business taxes so he wouldn't have to give all the monies to the IRS and payments needed to be cash. The other condition was that we would not be able to get financing on the place until the offer to compromise was up sometime around June this year. For all July 2014 and the first half of August we were unable to contact the owner to pay our payments. Well on August 18th at about 10am we got a call from a guy that lives with us that the constable was at our house giving us notice that we must vacate the premises by midnight. Come to find out that he had been to court and got a default judgment and won the eviction for nonpayment of rent. We never received any notice, by mail, on the door, in person, NOTHING. He said in court that he hired a company to serve notice and posted it on our door and mailed a copy to us. This did not happen Or the notices were intercepted before we saw them. Obviously so we were not be able to defend ourselves in court. Well what's done is done as far as we have already moved out. We went to court after being evicted to be allowed to retrieve the rest of our belonging that we were unable to take due to the time allowed, we were given 4 days to remove our items. Can I sue him for not giving proper notice after the fact. The attorney that we hired to get us the time to get our belongings got a copy of the notice and it was only to 1 of the 5 people living there, which from what I understand is not acceptable, all tenants must be notified. Because we were under the understanding that we would be buying the place we dealt with many problems with the property like, no running water, sewer gases escaping into the kitchen, no working air conditioning,& illegal wiring in the back of the trailer that later caused a fire and made 3 rooms of the house have no electricity. I just cant let him get away with this with no consequences but I spent all my savings on the attorney to get back into the property to retrieve the rest of our belongings and to rent a place to live. I cant prove that he didn't give us notice but he cant prove that we got notice either because not one of us was notified of a court date to try to defend ourselves. Can I do anything in small claims court?