Burglary, Arson, Home Invasion Charged with burglary by landlord's

[Shartiger]

My landlord's are trying to do numerous things to damage me, to sue me for unpaid rent for 1 year and then charging me for burglary when I entered the property to collect my property. My lease expired in April 2004 (1 yr lease), not knowing of changes made to that lease, my boy-friend at that time who was also on the lease initialed to consent to increase the rate of taxes to pay for late payments. The landlord added extra charges after my lease expired and I did not consent to any changes. So after 1 year, since April 2004 to April 2005, they are suing me for $16,000 of unpaid rent + damages to property. At time of lawsuit in April 2005, they did an eviction by sending a sheriff with a court order. This notice also had my name included, but I did not sign it. It was only signed by the other person who was on the lease. Can they proceed with the eviciton even if I never had any kind of notice and which I wasn't informed of anything?

I want to know, am I responsible for the unpaid portion being that my lease expired in 2004, then initialed to changes made by the other party on the lease?

Is it a crime to enter the property you rented to collect property that had been left back due to the landlord's agressive behavior to make a tenant leave without giving enough notice to get out? Do the landlord's have the right to approach me one day with no prior notice to leave the property giving only 2 days?

That wasn't the end. Other tenants that were living there and a friend who I listed as a reference told me that the landlord told them that I was helping someone by stealing money from an elderly man. But when I asked the investigator about, he had told me that I was a witness to the case. What business does the landlord's have to interfere and make their own personal judgments when they didn't even know what the fact's were?

Am I entitled to sue them for defamation/slander by misusing of my personal information and saying things to other people that were false?

Is it a fair judgment to convict me for Burglary 1 charge if being that I didn't sign any eviction notices, doesn't that still give me rights to enter the property to get back the rest of my belongings?

Will someone please tell me where I went wrong and if I am totally responsible for all of this and what can I do to protect my rights as a tenant and a person?

 

[Michael Wechsler]

My landlord's are trying to do numerous things to damage me, to sue me for unpaid rent for 1 year and then charging me for burglary when I entered the property to collect my property. My lease expired in April 2004 (1 yr lease), not knowing of changes made to that lease, my boy-friend at that time who was also on the lease initialed to consent to increase the rate of taxes to pay for late payments. The landlord added extra charges after my lease expired and I did not consent to any changes. So after 1 year, since April 2004 to April 2005, they are suing me for $16,000 of unpaid rent + damages to property. At time of lawsuit in April 2005, they did an eviction by sending a sheriff with a court order. This notice also had my name included, but I did not sign it. It was only signed by the other person who was on the lease. Can they proceed with the eviciton even if I never had any kind of notice and which I wasn't informed of anything?

I want to know, am I responsible for the unpaid portion being that my lease expired in 2004, then initialed to changes made by the other party on the lease?

Is it a crime to enter the property you rented to collect property that had been left back due to the landlord's agressive behavior to make a tenant leave without giving enough notice to get out? Do the landlord's have the right to approach me one day with no prior notice to leave the property giving only 2 days?

That wasn't the end. Other tenants that were living there and a friend who I listed as a reference told me that the landlord told them that I was helping someone by stealing money from an elderly man. But when I asked the investigator about, he had told me that I was a witness to the case. What business does the landlord's have to interfere and make their own personal judgments when they didn't even know what the fact's were?

Am I entitled to sue them for defamation/slander by misusing of my personal information and saying things to other people that were false?

Is it a fair judgment to convict me for Burglary 1 charge if being that I didn't sign any eviction notices, doesn't that still give me rights to enter the property to get back the rest of my belongings?

Will someone please tell me where I went wrong and if I am totally responsible for all of this and what can I do to protect my rights as a tenant and a person?

I'm sorry to hear about your problems but I think that you may not have a winning case:

(1) Did you live on the property after your boyfriend consented to the rent increase? I'm assuming you did and, if so, it would be very difficult to argue that you did not consent to the terms of the lease and consider yourself bound by the lease. I won't get into details about "ratification" but it's common sense. If you lived there, at some point you must have known about what the new rent was because you were reponsible to pay the rent each month.

(2) If you were evicted from the property, you should have taken your property with you at that time. I'm not sure why you didn't. The landlord had the right to recover the property and the marshal had to be called and paid to enforce the judgment against you, to which you would be responsible to pay for under your lease, if it's standard like virtually every lease I have seen. In addition, the landlord likely provided numerous notices to which you should have known an eviction was taking place. If a tenant was required to "sign" papers then delinquent tenants would never be evicted from property and it makes no sense that you should be required to do so. You must have known that you were required to pay rent and did not do so.

(3) Once you are evicted from the property, you have no legal right to be there. Breaking into the property is the same as if you broke into someone else's property.

(4) You would likely have no claims for defamation because, even if technically you might have a claim, what would your monetary damages be? The court costs and effort would greatly outweight the minute damages you might hope to receive.

Where I believe you went wrong was living on the property and not paying the rent. You must have known this was problematic and the rest is just the unfortunate repercussions from not doing so. I wish you better luck in the future but you need to take responsiblity for your actions and be aware of what happens around you.

 

[Shartiger]

I think that I haven't explained the issue in detail. There were important documents that wasn't given to me about any notices for changes in the lease and eviction, and that the landlords have failed to comply with the landlord/tenant code laws in my state. They didn't even have a property manager at the time when renting in a different state of their residence. So the landlord's had avoided to be available to the tenant's when needed.

In my criminal case, I am not the tenant living there, which is why they are proceeding with the charges, because if I was the tenant, they cannot charge me. I wasn't served with proper notification to leave the property! And why wasn't I served with notice? Because the court says that I wasn't a tenant. I am confused about the fact that they want to sue me for a deal that did not fall through with my boyfriend. I am also close to trial for the unpaid portion, which is now in my favor because the landlords have failed to give me any kind of notices. I assume that they were dealing with my boyfriend over rent deduction for work on their property and that when changes to the lease were made, they never sent me any notice about it. So after the changes were initialed, I was declared not a tenant (according to my lawyer) So if they cannot provide the information (notices), then they were making it impossible for me to know about this, which is now in my favor because according to the law, a landlord is also responsible to give notice of changes, advance notice before entering, notice of eviction, etc.

I'm sorry to hear about your problems but I think that you may not have a winning case:

(1) Did you live on the property after your boyfriend consented to the rent increase? I'm assuming you did and, if so, it would be very difficult to argue that you did not consent to the terms of the lease and consider yourself bound by the lease. I won't get into details about "ratification" but it's common sense. If you lived there, at some point you must have known about what the new rent was because you were reponsible to pay the rent each month.

(2) If you were evicted from the property, you should have taken your property with you at that time. I'm not sure why you didn't. The landlord had the right to recover the property and the marshal had to be called and paid to enforce the judgment against you, to which you would be responsible to pay for under your lease, if it's standard like virtually every lease I have seen. In addition, the landlord likely provided numerous notices to which you should have known an eviction was taking place. If a tenant was required to "sign" papers then delinquent tenants would never be evicted from property and it makes no sense that you should be required to do so. You must have known that you were required to pay rent and did not do so.

(3) Once you are evicted from the property, you have no legal right to be there. Breaking into the property is the same as if you broke into someone else's property.

(4) You would likely have no claims for defamation because, even if technically you might have a claim, what would your monetary damages be? The court costs and effort would greatly outweight the minute damages you might hope to receive.

Where I believe you went wrong was living on the property and not paying the rent. You must have known this was problematic and the rest is just the unfortunate repercussions from not doing so. I wish you better luck in the future but you need to take responsiblity for your actions and be aware of what happens around you.

 

[Shartiger]

My attorney told me that even if someone does something wrong to me, do not ever take it upon myself to fix the problem. I was given probation and community service for it and not convicted, boy was I really worried that I might be in jail for something like this.

It would be wise for everyone who does rent a place to always make written agreements because your landlord will deny everything from asking you to do repairs or cutt a tree that's growing over the house. As tenant's we feel a responsibility to do yardwork, but not to extremes of cutting trees. And if there's anything your landlord does wrong such as not having anyone to manage if they're in a different state to report them right away before they start taking advantage of you. ALOHA!

 

[Shartiger]

My attorney told me that even if someone does something wrong to me, do not ever take it upon myself to fix the problem. I was given probation and community service for it and not convicted, boy was I really worried that I might be in jail for something like this.

It would be wise for everyone who does rent a place to always make written agreements because your landlord will deny everything from asking you to do repairs or cutt a tree that's growing over the house. As tenant's we feel a responsibility to do yardwork, but not to extremes of cutting trees. And if there's anything your landlord does wrong such as not having anyone to manage if they're in a different state to report them right away before they start taking advantage of you. ALOHA!