Emergency eviction of tenant needed

[leosag07]

Jurisdiction

Georgia

I have allowed my sister in law to stay with me until she got her income taxes that was back in February. In April she had obtained employment and her second week of working she started giving me $50 a week. I asked her yesterday to give me $100 instead of $50 & forget about next week. She refused. I told her I needed it for an bill I couldnt pay after paying all the rest she still refused. So I asked her to leave. She wants to see a 30 day notice. Is there a way to get her to leave before 30 days??

 

[army judge]

I have allowed my sister in law to stay with me until she got her income taxes that was back in February. In April she had obtained employment and her second week of working she started giving me $50 a week. I asked her yesterday to give me $100 instead of $50 & forget about next week. She refused. I told her I needed it for an bill I couldnt pay after paying all the rest she still refused. So I asked her to leave. She wants to see a 30 day notice. Is there a way to get her to leave before 30 days??

Sigh, I'll go over this for the umpteenth time.

If you allow people to live in your home, the only way to get them out LEGALLY is to evict them.

Don't allow overnight guests, or rent out rooms.
It rarely works out as you expect.

So, Google "eviction YOUR COUNTY, GA"

You'll have to give her a letter requesting she leave.
You'll wait for the 30 days to pass.
On the 31st day if she's still there, you go to your local courthouse and file your eviction.
In GA it's called a "dispossessory writ".

Here's a guide to the process.
Do it step by step.
If you make one mistake, you must start over.
The process takes six to eight weeks AFTER the 30 days expires.

Evictions (Georgia)

 

[adjusterjack]

I have allowed my sister in law to stay with me until she got her income taxes that was back in February. In April she had obtained employment and her second week of working she started giving me $50 a week.

She is your tenant, you are her landlord. You are both subject to the GA landlord tenant statute.

In the absence of a written lease it is a "tenancy at will" (aka month-to-month).

GA Code Section 44-7-7 requires that you give her 60 days notice of termination:

2015 Georgia Code :: Title 44 - PROPERTY :: Chapter 7 - LANDLORD AND TENANT :: Article 1 - IN GENERAL :: § 44-7-7 - Tenancy at will -- Notice required for termination

Since increasing the rent is the same as terminating a current rental agreement, then you would also have to give her 60 days notice of any rent increase.

Is there a way to get her to leave before 30 days??

You could pay her to leave. It's called "cash for keys" and it's a common technique used by landlords who are desperate to get rid of objectionable tenants quickly when there is no other "legal" way of doing it.

 

[Michael Wechsler]

In some states one can be determined to be a house guest rather than a tenant, the former not requiring an eviction. The reasons to believe someone may be a house guest as opposed to a tenant are:

• Not paying rent or a portion of the rent
• Not sharing cost of expenses, e.g. utilities
• The purpose behind the occupancy

Nobody ever thinks of creating a Tenancy at Will agreement with house guests who may stay for extended periods of time. It's a serious problem when people who are relatives or friends decide that they will take advantage of the situation. Here is a case on point in Georgia in Williams v. State which is related to determining whether the criminal defendant was a guest or a tenant (who needed to be evicted) from the premises.

Williams's occupancy of the shed was conditioned on his having a job; he did not have a key to the shed; and there is no evidence that he paid rent. These facts are sufficient to support the conclusion that Williams was a guest, rather than a tenant, with no legal authority to remain on the property after Smiley told him to leave. The facts also might have supported the conclusion that Williams was a tenant at will. ​

So this being the case, if you hadn't accepted the money you may have been able to give your sister in law the boot. But once you had, you created a tenancy of some sort, at least it would seem to be the case. So, what can you do?

First, if it's your sister in law then I'd expect your husband to be able to help with remedying the situation. Second, it is your option to file a claim in small claims court which will become a public record. I'm not quite sure what the agreement was but it seems that her free ride ended in February. Even she accepted that she was responsible to pay a portion of the housing expenses going forward. How much responsibility can be left to a court, if the young woman wants to deal with the law on defense and not just on offense. And filing a case means it becomes a matter of public record, which your sister in law may prefer to avoid. Perhaps a discussion of each of your options might yield a written agreement between the two of you. My guess is that she is also trying to buy time and will probably need it. If you can settle your differences on 30 days for her to find a new apartment along with reasonable costs, perhaps you can salvage a bad situation and a strained family relationship. We don't have all the details so don't take my thoughts as actionable legal advice, just thoughts on what could theoretically be done given the facts we are discussing informally. Good luck.

 

[adjusterjack]

So this being the case, if you hadn't accepted the money you may have been able to give your sister in law the boot. But once you had, you created a tenancy of some sort, at least it would seem to be the case.

The Williams case doesn't exactly make that clear.

But I found other case decisions that appear to follow a trend that an occupant who contributes money to the owner may still be ruled a guest and not a tenant.

"Some evidence supported the trial court's tacit finding that the parents were heads of household as opposed to landlords. Warner was home for the summer from college and did not pay rent. Beyond the fact that he had no rental agreement with his parents, the court could readily discount his alleged sporadic payment of unspecified amounts as "rent" when he had money. See Turner v. State[10] (voluntarily contributing to expenses did not suffice as rent)."

Google Scholar

In Ford v. State the court explains:

"Viewing the evidence in favor of the trial court's rulings, and accepting his findings as to the evidence (id.), we must conclude that appellant's sister had sufficient authority and control to consent to a search of her entire apartment. According to the trial court's findings of fact, she did not give up control and authority of her apartment merely by allowing appellant to stay in one of its bedrooms and accepting money from him, and she did not give up her right to object to his use of her home for illegal purposes.

The dissent would have it that if a guest gives money to his host, the guest acquires an expectation of privacy which destroys her control of her home. The dissent's view of appellant's "rent" would create a society where every person is held hostage, as it were, to any crime a guest commits, if he gave her money. This is a dangerous proposal. We protect "[t]he right of the people to be secure in their [premises] against unreasonable searches" (emphasis supplied) (Ga. Const. 1983, Art. I, Sec. I, Par. XIII), but no Georgia court has ever 286*286 held so liberal a view as promoted by the dissent. Possibly if this ungrateful guest had kept dismembered bodies in his room rather than drugs, the dissent would not take such a liberal view of the rights he got merely by giving money to his host, and such a dim view of her right to control her home. The question is not whether a guest gives his host money but whether he had a reasonable expectation of privacy which would render unreasonable a search consented to by the host. The trial court concluded that whatever the purpose of the money, appellant did not have a reasonable expectation of privacy and the host's consent to search included her entire premises. It counts for something that she did not consider any of her house to be so exclusively "his" as to remove her right to consent to a search. Neither did the trial court under all the facts. The "law of paying rent" proposed by the dissent does not change the facts into a question of law, and is not the law of this state."

Google Scholar

The GA court seems pretty adamant that simply contributing money to the owner does not turn a guest into a tenant.

Two more decisions discuss the issue to some extent:

Google Scholar

Google Scholar

 

[army judge]

An eviction case can takes weeks before you get docketed.
Until the matter has been docketed, it won't get an expedited hearing.
The BEST way to avoid the issue of deadbeat "guests" is never allow one to reside one night in your home.
If you wish to help a homeless waif, give them a cash DONATION to assist them with a short hotel stay.
Unfortunately, the critters with deadbeat proclivities will stick to you like dog feces on your $2,000 a pair shoes, or your $1.00 flip flops.

Guests, like fish, begin to smell after three days.
Benjamin Franklin

Read more at:

Benjamin Franklin Quotes at BrainyQuote.com



Benjamin Franklin Quotes at BrainyQuote.com

 

[Michael Wechsler]

"Some evidence supported the trial court's tacit finding that the parents were heads of household as opposed to landlords. Warner was home for the summer from college and did not pay rent. Beyond the fact that he had no rental agreement with his parents, the court could readily discount his alleged sporadic payment of unspecified amounts as "rent" when he had money. See Turner v. State[10] (voluntarily contributing to expenses did not suffice as rent)."

Good point and agreed - it's not altogether clear and there is probably a threshhold somehwere as to when a guest's minor contributions cross over into tenant. I think that factor 3 - the purpose behind the occupancy - may be telling. The cases cited above concern immediate family members who have lived together for extended periods of time and it's also in contrast to the one cited by me which consists of unrelated parties. And to be fair, I'm not sure what $50 per week or $200 / month means in the context of room rentals in Georgia, which can differ greatly when you're comparing Atlanta and Buckhead to a remote city an hour or two away. Is that large enough to say it's near a very favorable rental amount and not just what a reasonable guest might contribute?

Bottom line is that there is no way to be sure here and I meant more to say that "a question has been raised that doesn't seem to have a clear answer." Hard lesson to learn and the only way to know the answer is to go to court - whether it is as a result of an eviction or a lockout.