I have a joker who's trying to stiff me on repairs and our hearing is coming up on Wednesday. This kid put his elbow through my shower wall. When he did it, he asked if he could repair. I normally don't allow tenants to do that, but I relented but he never did it so I had my guy do it. As a courtesy, I then offered in writing to let him reimburse me in two payments including a $ 5.00 service charge which would have amounted to $ 117 paid over the next couple of months, but he never responded to the letter and when it came time to pay the rent, he felt he shouldn't have to reimburse me for the repairs and wanted me to take it out of the SD. He made his regular rent payment and I applied a portion of that towards the repair reimbursement and filed for eviction for the balance. So what was a $ 225 bill is now nearly double and I'm no longer interested in installments after trying to accommodate him.

I give all tenants a copy of their lease upon signing. Basically, we execute two copies of the lease and the extra copy is theirs. He texted me yesterday saying he lost his copy and needs me to give him another one. Rather than having kept the lease somewhere for ready reference, he's discarded it which tells me he had no intention of complying with the terms. I decide to take my sweet time responding to his request and the tenant is now is a panic having texted me on three separate occasions today wanting to know when I'm going to send the lease copy. He apparently thinks he's going to glean something from the lease that will allow him to mount a defense to non payment of rent.

This is after never responding to my claims for repairs and being a major league axx. I fulfilled my obligations when I gave him the lease when he first signed. I may just tell him that I'll bring a copy of it to court for him. Since he wants to act like a bat and fly in the dark, I might as well let him continue for the next couple of days.

My guess is the court will not look kindly on you not giving him another copy of the lease.

1. He wants you to take the cost of the repair out of his SD. But, where will you get your money in the end, if not from the deposit?

2. How is the $225 bill now nearly double?

3. The court is not likely to look kindly on your refusal to give a copy of the lease. In fact, the court has a procedure called "discovery", where a party to a lawsuit can obtain copies of documents or other evidence necessary to prosecute or defend their case. The court expects the parties to cooperate in sharing evidence, and not to require the court to have to issue orders to provide evidence that should be shared as a professional courtesy.

4. If the money was given to you as rent, then the law of obligations says that the rent obligation was satisfied. In general, courts don't like to base an eviction on the trick that the landlord diverted money from the intended payment of rent in order to construct a nonpayment for the purpose of creating an eviction. CA has a statute that determines how payments are to be allocated to obligations. You might want to check your local law.

There was some chatter on this forum about charging for lease copies. Maybe even require a self addressed stamped envelope!

I don't mind providing a cooy because my lease is thorough. He'll read that he has to pay.

In our hundreds of evictions I can only recall one instance of the res demanding a lease copy.

Make a copy of the appropriate page or your repair agreement, highlight the clause, and let him dealnwith it.

I always send scanned copies of the lease to the tenant a day or 2 after signing. Then if we get to court and the tenant claims I never gave him a copy, I can show the judge the date and time stamped email with the attachment. I also use "Boomerang" software plug in for Gmail with read-receipts that show the date and time the email was accessed.

I do not recommend having two copies signed in original ink. Too easy for someone to add/deleting something to/from their copy and claim it is the legit copy. Back when I gave paper copies, all copies had the word "COPY" stamped at the top. Buy a $1 "COPY" red ink stamp if you don't have one.

Demanding a copy of the lease is a typical stall tactic. Go ahead and take pictures of it on your phone and text it to him...one...page...at...a...time.

Not sure why the bill is now double...late fees? Be sure you're not doing anything that would cause the judge to raise his eyebrows...aka, the "eye brow" test.

Sorry, missed your last post about the added late fees and court costs. Yep, sounds like everything is accounted for. Now the ball is in his court: pay or leave.

Even if the tenant agrees it is a violation to touch the SD funds until the tenant vacates. I would just tell the tenant that using his SD isn't an option.

You are in PA not tenantfornia. You do not owe him another copy of the lease especially in this situation. Take an extra copy to court and if he asks give it to him in front of the judge. Judge doesn't care if he lost his lease and you won't give him another copy, don't get involved with the conversation. The security deposit is to cover damages after the tenant moves out and he can't demand you take damages out before he moves. Let him bring up you offered to take payments but he still didn't pay.

Tenant: Take it out of the SD.

LL: Sure -- as soon as you provide enough funds to bring the SD BACK to its proper balance.

How did your hearing go?

Well, I lost and won. My lease language was strong and the tenant had no defense regarding non payment, but they did grasp a straw that went in their favor. My town requires an inspection of apartment units on every turnover which few landlords do. I was speaking with another LL and he also knows of no one who does this except maybe the large apartment complexes. Since my unit hadn't been inspected on the turnover, the judge ruled that the lease was invalid but also ruled that the tenant could not unjustly enrich himself and had to vacate. So the tenant avoided an judgment and eviction and I get the unit back. I do have to contend with a vacancy, which I would have had to deal with anyway unless he paid.

Had I had the inspection done, which quite frankly I didn't even think about, I would have gotten the judgement and eviction. The tenant grasped for straws thinking the lack of inspection was going to help him--and it did---but he still has to give up the unit.

My town charges $ 100 for these inspections and absolutely no one does it and the inspection is supposed to be attached to the lease. There's no way for the town to monitor this either as they have no idea when there's a turnover. Technically, you're getting a certificate of occupancy on the turnover.

This only helped the tenant to avoid a eviction on his record.