The problem of having to ask someone to leave from your residence can be a tricky one. The situation where a house guest just won’t leave will make you try various ways to throw the person out of your house.
Is your house guest now a tenant?
You’ll need to find out if the person has started receiving their own mails to your address. If this has happened then the police might not want to get involved since this step would indicate that the person has made your residence their home too. However if this hasn’t happened yet, then you can simply ask them to leave. If they refuse to do so, you can call upon the police to escort them out as trespassers to your property. Before you call the police though, it is advisable to try and talk them into leaving.
Sometimes the police might refuse from getting involved in such situations since such situations would fall under non-criminal domestic dispute or because the house guest may have already established themselves as a resident of the place. However if the person refuses to leave and law enforcement fails to help you, you can contact an attorney regarding the same.
3 Steps to get rid of your house guest
1Certified letter
The next step would then be taking legal action against the overstaying house guest, so it would be pertinent to make it certain that you taken them in compliance with your jurisdiction and proper legal requirements. In majority of such cases, you should send a certified letter to the guest asking them to leave in 30 days. Because even though this guest may not legally be a tenant, certain principles of the landlord-tenant law would still apply.
2Termination of a lease
Thus, if one can provide notice of termination of a lease, it should contain a notice of at least as many days out as the periodic term of the lease (i.e., giving a month’s notice in case of it being a monthly lease). The law defaults to a month if no term specifying it is included in the lease, or if there’s no lease existing. Your notice needs to comply with the statutory requirements of the jurisdiction regarding termination of lease notices and if possible, you should ask the house guest to let you know what needs to be done with their belongings if they fail to vacate. This however, is a risky course of action since the guest can claim that you ousted them and seek damages in case their belongings are harmed or go missing.
3Tenant eviction
If you are worried about this happening, you should take help of tenant eviction. This would be a costlier process but you will be provided with greater protection. However it is advisable that you hire an experienced landlord-tenant lawyer to help with this legal procedure.
Originally posted 2017-07-28 04:56:28.
