Out of state small claims court for security deposit. TX/ND

[toolittletoofar]

Moved out from an apartment in Texas to North Dakota. Too far away to be able to physically take them to small claims court myself. I am trying to find out if I can take them to small claims court without appearing in person, or if I need to retain an attorney, how likely I am to pay for the attorney. I also need to know what kind of time limit I have on this.

From my reading, if it is past 30 days from a forwarding address being provided, not from move-out, and I don't receive it, they owe me 3x the deposit, 100 dollars, plus attorney fees. (Assuming I am owed one, I am, and assuming they did not provide me a list, which they did not)

I moved out in May, emailed the apartment manager regarding my deposit and had her verify that they owed me about 250 dollars. She stated they had no forwarding address despite it being written on the envelope I turned my keys in on. I am counting from the email, since I can prove she received that. The email date is June. It's September. I have received no other contact from them since then.

I cannot take off from work to travel to Houston, TX for a court date for a little over a thousand dollars. Do I have any options?

 

[STEPHAN]

I am counting from the email, since I can prove she received that.

How do you want to do that? It takes me 2 minutes to fake an email - even if it includes quotes from my earlier mail.

Anything with regular certified mail?

 

[toolittletoofar]

How do you want to do that? It takes me 2 minutes to fake an email - even if it includes quotes from my earlier mail.

Anything with regular certified mail?

I haven't received anything, and I didn't send my address via certified mail, because how can I prove it contained my address? Checks with my ND address on them that I paid rent with aren't valid because we can't legally hold them to pulling it. The burden of proof is with the tenant, and it seems very easy for the apartments to shrug and claim they never received it. They've already lied about it once.

Do emails not hold up in small claims court? How would one fake something like that?

 

[STEPHAN]

So, how do you know the received the email and it did not end up in a spam filter?

 

[toolittletoofar]

So, how do you know the received the email and it did not end up in a spam filter?

They replied to it.