What is the name of your state? California
I can't find a better place to put this, so I'm sorry if this is the incorrect location.
We moved to this townhouse a few months ago, but the former tenants never forwarded their mail. We've received everything from magazine to their W2s (you can kind of tell by looking at it), government mail, business tax envelopes, credit card statements, and letters from their child's Montessori school. Basically with what's been sent to us, if we were dishonest people, we'd have all the information on them to ruin their lives. So I don't know why the hell they haven't forwarded anything.
We've received so much of it we printed sticky labels to save time writing, "Return to sender, intended recipient no longer at this address." But we'll still receive future mailings. I thought that maybe the Montessori school would have contacted them to ask for an updated address, but we still receive regular mailings from them. So we're presuming that these people are still claiming this address.
And we're getting tired of it. It's been months. We're spending money to return their mail for labels and ink (ink cartridges ain't cheap, folk, and the labels aren't free), time when we've had to take packages down to the post office to return them, etc.. The post office says they don't have authorization to send the mail anywhere else without a forward card, and so much deliver all mail. We can return what's not ours.
We're tired of feeling like we're responsible for other people's lives. Really, with what has been delivered to us.... If we were to just start shredding it and throwing it away, could that be seen as tampering with mail? Could they later come back and successfully sue us (anyone can sue, winning is a different matter) if we were to destroy something that ends up being important enough that they wanted it?
What are our LEGAL options for what to do with this mail? After so long, I'm starting to wonder if it's not abandoned. If we were to just throw it away, could we end up in any legal hot water? The rental office isn't sure what to do either, though they've been aware of this problem since a few weeks after we moved in and mentioned it to them.
Thank you in advance.
I can't find a better place to put this, so I'm sorry if this is the incorrect location.
We moved to this townhouse a few months ago, but the former tenants never forwarded their mail. We've received everything from magazine to their W2s (you can kind of tell by looking at it), government mail, business tax envelopes, credit card statements, and letters from their child's Montessori school. Basically with what's been sent to us, if we were dishonest people, we'd have all the information on them to ruin their lives. So I don't know why the hell they haven't forwarded anything.
We've received so much of it we printed sticky labels to save time writing, "Return to sender, intended recipient no longer at this address." But we'll still receive future mailings. I thought that maybe the Montessori school would have contacted them to ask for an updated address, but we still receive regular mailings from them. So we're presuming that these people are still claiming this address.
And we're getting tired of it. It's been months. We're spending money to return their mail for labels and ink (ink cartridges ain't cheap, folk, and the labels aren't free), time when we've had to take packages down to the post office to return them, etc.. The post office says they don't have authorization to send the mail anywhere else without a forward card, and so much deliver all mail. We can return what's not ours.
We're tired of feeling like we're responsible for other people's lives. Really, with what has been delivered to us.... If we were to just start shredding it and throwing it away, could that be seen as tampering with mail? Could they later come back and successfully sue us (anyone can sue, winning is a different matter) if we were to destroy something that ends up being important enough that they wanted it?
What are our LEGAL options for what to do with this mail? After so long, I'm starting to wonder if it's not abandoned. If we were to just throw it away, could we end up in any legal hot water? The rental office isn't sure what to do either, though they've been aware of this problem since a few weeks after we moved in and mentioned it to them.
Thank you in advance.
