Small claims to get a refund for services not provided

What is the name of your state? Kansas

I know this is late in the game but I was looking for some advice on my situation. We are going to small claims today to try to get our money back from our old daycare provider. We paid for five weeks of service in advance (must pay one week advance) and one week later pulled our daughter out of that daycare.

Here's my attempt to make a long story short...
The contract says no refunds (first problem for our case). However, the woman runs the daycare at home and about a month before pulling our daughter out the woman and her husband decided they were getting a divorce due to both being unfaithful and the woman began having her new boyfriend over all the time. (Even staying at the house over night while the husband and kids still live there) Anyway, the boyfriend is there when we drop our daughter off and pick her up. This I'm not comfortable with at all. As time goes on there are signs that my daughter is being neglected such as coming home in a different outfit almost everyday from leaking through the diaper. (she never does this at home) Many times the whole front of her shirt was crusted from spit-up. The list goes on...

The straw that broke the camels back.... My wife dropped her off one morning and there was a new woman there whom we'd never met along with the normal daycare woman and her boyfriend. My wife was introduced briefly and had to head off to work. When she returns to pick up our daughter, the only people there are the new lady and the boyfriend. The old daycare lady left to pick up her soon to be ex-husband from work. This was a Friday and we found a new sitter over the weekend and started that one on Monday. We want the money back from our pre-payment and sent a letter requesting it and she sent a letter saying "no refunds". We are going in with the argument "Unjust enrichment"
Any help?

I know I left things out, but thats the quick and dirty of it.What is the name of your state?

Focus on the fact that "no refund" is generally meant to apply to services that have already been provided...

We won....kinda.

We got half the money we asked for... now what if she doesn't pay?

martym14 said:

We got half the money we asked for... now what if she doesn't pay?

Click to expand...

You will have to execute on your judgment.

Google...

what does that mean...

I assume that means follow through. But my question is how do I do that?

There are various ways, but they depend on what is permitted by the laws of your state, the urgency of your recovery needs and what is cost-efficient.

While the costs of enforcement using any method provided by statute can normally be added to the judgment and included in ultimate recovery, that doesn’t mean that you use a method that costs $1,000 to recover $1,000, because you now must be assured of recovering $2,000.

Likewise, recording a real property lien may be an effective enforcement tool, but it may not bear fruit for years. You can still impose it.

You can search “enforce judgment” on this site and develop a good number of options. One simple one might be a levy on her bank account. If you previously paid by check, look at the back of a negotiated check and you should find the routing number (branch) and her account number. Levy on funds.

The judgment will be a public record that is added to her credit report and that will increase the cost of new credit for years to come. It will take a month or two for the data to be picked up. Perhaps just pointing out the adverse consequences would motivate an offer of payment to avoid that. Satisfying the judgment quickly won’t prevent the judgment being recorded, but a satisfied judgment record will be less onerous. In fact, for a quick payment, you could agree to allow the judgment to be vacated and the case dismissed and there would never be a record. The record itself won’t get you paid, but it will hurt her, and that may get you paid.