I along with someone my wife knew signed a 1 year rental agreement for a townhouse. There were originally two other roomates who paid rent for which it was verbally agreed that my wife and I would handle one while the other person would handle the other. Now because of a poor relationship between my wife and the person who signed the contract with me, that person wishes to back out and wrote to us saying that she will not be paying rent anymore and that we should just apply the security deposit(2.5 months worth which the landlord has) to the remaining rent(4 months left). My question is what can i do so that she continues to pay as she is supposed to be and have it where we don't get evicted? There are other concerns such as her name being on some of the utilities and the cost associated with having to reactivate them? What can I do about those. Does this have to go to court to be settled? I do not wish to left homeless. How about my credit report, how will that be affected?