Re: tenant at sufferance hasn't paid rent for over a year

More | Report Post

On 2/18/09, Ronda wrote:
> The owner of the apartment building says the agreement with the
> holdover tenant to allow him to stay in exchange for light cleaning
> services was an oral agreement.

It is the burden of the tenant who is claiming a valid lease to
produce it. If the agreement was made more than a year ago it is no
longer valid if it ever was.

Nevertheless, I suspect a breach of contract action may be necessary.
But then again maybe not. The landlord should attempt to evict the
tenant for non-payment of rent. The tenant will again have the burder
to show he has paid rent. It is unlikely that an oral contract over 1
year old will suffice as proof of payment of rent in exchange for
services. Unfortunately this is a little more difficult than a
straight eviction for non-payment action because of the difficulty of
establishing whether the services have been properly tendered
according to a valid contract.

(1) The contract may no longer be valid;

(2) If it is still valid, the tenant may have breached the contract by
non-preformance of services as required by the contract but that will
likely have to be determined in a contract action.

This was an interesting exercise and a welcom diversion from the
mindless banter about some hole in the wall online law school being
delisted. Unfortunately few participants on this board are capable of
giving consideration to legal problems that real students will be
facing in their course of study. More hypo style questions like this
would be nice.

However, as I said before, I regard this as a hypo situation and not
legal advice. If this is a real legal question involving real people,
only an attorney licensed to practice law in your jurisdiction can
give you legal advice. This was just a practice exercise. OK?