I recently had a roommate that moved out and I am sueing him for rent. This situation looks like this:

He is an occupant and I am the tenant. All the legal liabillity is on me. At the Real Estate Agency we both signed the lease but as an occupant he removed himself from the lease and he can do so because he is only an occupant. Also I am not the owner of the house. He also left without a 30 days notice and took the utilities with him.

Now he is claiming two reasons why he left. I generally had a lot of guest over and he claims to feel unsafe with my guest constantly coming and going. He is also claiming unfair treatment because he had paid most the bills when I couldn't. So I do owe him some money.

But we had a verbal agreement that he would stay until the lease end. So can I sue him for that which is $2,000 and likely win? The state is NC.

every time I owe someone money I sue them

I owe him only $360. Rent is $400 dollars a month.

in my opinion you have constructively evicted him and would not win a case, this is not legal advice, just my opinion, not intended to provide any legal advise

Here, you could sue him in small claims court. Your chances of winning would depend on several things: what sort of records you kept, receipts, the exact wording on the lease, whether he would even show up in court.

Here, if the party sued doesn't show up for small claims, it's pretty much a guaranteed default judgment for the plaintiff. If he shows up, you may have to sit down and try to work things out and present the judge with a written agreement as to what you've decided to do. If you can't come to an agreement, the judge will hear your case and he'll decide.

If you get a judgment against him, you are still not guaranteed any money. If he knows there's a judgment and he voluntarily pays up, that's great. If he doesn't know or won't pay, you can go back to court for a garnishment hearing, if you know where he works, and you try to have his pay garnished.

In short, more often than not, where renters/rental property are concerned, you can/will throw a lot of money down a black hole before you ever get any money back, if you ever get any money at all.

This is not intended as legal advice; simply sharing my "typical" SW Okla experience with having taken renters to small claims court.

But I do have enough evidence to show that it wasn't until the end of the lease because the tenant himself wasn't planning to stay until the end of lease.

I am thinking about inviting the Real Estate Agency and the Owner of the house to the trail. The tenant as a number of HOA voliations on the house, amounting to about $600 and also has a large late fee amount owed to the real estate company, about another $600 dollars.

In addition to proving that the verbal agreement was staying the whole lease was not agreed upon, I am trying to prove that the living situation was unfair, the tenant was irresponsible and incompontent, and broke the law and lease on more than one occasion, therefore I should not be held accountable to him or anything in that house.

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You have me confused - better luck with a judge.

A common situation and in broad terms a contract which involves real estate needs to be in writing to become enforceable, maybe you can find some free legal advice somewhere, please find an attorney as this information is worth less then what I charged you for it, which in nothing = 0.00.

Question - does the former 'occupant' and 'tenant' both use the same log in to this forum - seems like it to me??

Reading and rereading the 2 posts from MLWD - only add to my confusion.

not ALL real estate agreements need to be in writing, under the Statute of Frauds.


"the tenant was irresponsible and incompontent"

MyLan, in your first post you said YOU are the tenant. so, are you both the tenant and the occupant? do you have multiple personalities? are you planning to sue yourself?

sure, you can invite the homeowner and real estate agency to the trial (which really isn't a trial), but they just might have more important things to do that day.

good luck!

in MI an oral month/month lease is valid

Verbal in NC is legal - no problem at all - however if you wish to 'enforce' it in court - it really needs to be in writing - or so the NCREC says - but hey, what do they know?? -

Enforceable vs Legal - a question in some form on nearly every real estate exam I've heard about.