To win a collection lawsuit the landlord must prove that you broke the lease. The landlord proves its case using documents and witnesses. You, too, can use documents and witnesses to defend yourself. If you do not respond to the Summons and appear in court, the landlord will likely win a default judgment against you. With a default judgment the landlord may:.
If you are sued in Civil Court or Supreme Court, you must serve your Answer within 20 or 30 days, depending on how you were served. If you are sued in Small Claims Court, you must appear on the return date in the Summons, but a written Answer is not required.
Once in court, you will need to prove what you stated in your Answer. Apply for, renew, update and cancel a licence or registration, lodge an annual statement, legal responsibilities. Register, update, manage, or search for an incorporated association, fundraiser, or patriotic fund.
Forms and publications, legislation, languages, scams, Koori, and disability resources, advice in a disaster. If a renter leaves the property, room or site before their rental agreement ends or leaves without giving notice, they might be breaking their rental agreement. This used to be called breaking the lease. If the rental provider landlord has to cover costs because the renter broke the rental agreement, the renter will usually have to pay them back.
These costs might include remaining rent, advertising fees or fees to re-let the property. However, in some situations, the renter can leave before the end of the agreement without having to pay costs.
If you are experiencing family violence, you can apply to VCAT to end the rental agreement. Or, you can find information about how renters can tell a rental provider they want to leave by giving notice of intention to vacate , or how a rental provider can tell a renter they would like them to leave by giving them notice to vacate on other pages.
Breaking a rental agreement breaking a lease happens when a renter or resident leaves the property:. There are some reasons a renter can leave early without breaking the agreement and without having to pay costs.
These reasons only apply to renters of residential properties and not to residents of rooming houses or caravan parks. The renter must still tell the rental provider they are leaving by using the proper form and they must give the minimum amount of notice. Residents of residential parks can leave early if they need special and personal care, are moving into social housing or need temporary crisis accommodation.
However, they may still have to pay costs. Renters or residents should use one of these forms to tell the rental provider they will be leaving:. A rental agreement may include fees for breaking the agreement. Let's start with the basics: Your lease is a contract , obligating you to pay rent for the entire term. The fact that you pay in monthly installments doesn't change the fact that you owe the landlord for the entire amount.
So if you split early, what's to stop the landlord from suing you for the remaining months' rent? Fortunately, in most states, landlords cannot simply sit back and wait for the term to end, then sue you for the rent due after you left. Instead, landlords must take reasonable steps to rerent your former place and, if they are successful in rerenting, credit rent received from the new tenant to your debt. In legalese, this duty is called the landlord's duty to mitigate damages. Before you make the move, check your state law on landlord's duty to rerent that is, to mitigate damages.
This tenant-friendly rule has some limitations, however:. Unfortunately, many landlords are unaware of their duty to rerent for the benefit of the departing tenant. Even landlords who are aware of the rule often find the notion that they must make an effort to minimize the financial hit to someone who broke their lease tough to swallow.
The response of some landlords is to keep the security deposit at least and maybe even send a threatening letter demanding the balance of the rent. If this sounds like what happened to you, read on. If you've broken your lease and taken off, expect to lose a month's rent.
Even if state law requires your landlord to mitigate, most judges give landlords a month of rent as damages , no matter how quickly they advertised and showed the unit—or how quickly they could have rented it if they had tried. Most likely, your landlord will subtract this month's worth of damages from your security deposit. But being asked to pony up the rest of the rent due under your lease is something else entirely.
If your landlord sends you a letter demanding the balance due under your lease, respond with a polite letter, citing your state's law.
Doing so might make your landlord think twice about sitting idle and waiting to collect rent from you for an empty apartment. But what if your letter doesn't produce the desired result? You might be headed to court. Your former landlord might sue you for the rent due from the time you moved out until the end of the lease, or you might sue your former landlord to recover unreasonable deductions from your security deposit.
If you or your landlord sues, you'll need to have some proof that the landlord failed to mitigate to support your position. After you leave the rental, collect evidence of the landlord's efforts or lack thereof to rerent your former unit.
Try to find out whether the landlord advertised check Craigslist and rental ads for a month or so , showed the unit ask the neighbors , rented comparable apartments but not yours, or in fact rented the unit and is now attempting to double-dip. In some states, if you end up in court arguing that the landlord failed to take steps to rerent, you can't sit back and wait for the landlord to produce proof that he diligently tried to rerent.
While a tenant might not be held financially responsible for the remainder of the lease, this does not mean that a landlord is incapable of doing other harm, such as providing a negative reference or suing in small claims court for a civil judgment that could appear on a credit report. Because of this, it is important for a tenant to communicate with a landlord whenever possible. If a replacement tenant can be found that is suitable to the landlord, it can go a long way to resolving any issues that might develop when a lease needs to be broken.
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