A LEASE BETWEEN OLD FLAMES
- Julie Settle
- Jul 1
- 3 min read
When Mike rolled into town he was reeling from his divorce, but he found work quickly and he looked up his old flame Brenda.
“Mike, I got nothin’ to say to you.”
“I figured that’s what you’d say.”
“But you figured I’d take you in anyway?”
“You always have.”
“Well not this time.”
He gave her his best puppy dog eyes.
“Alright look,” she told him, “I got this rental place, it’s empty right now. I can put you up there, but you gotta pay rent.”
He handed her his first paycheck.
“That’ll do,” she said, “and I want to see it every month, you got it?”
“I knew I could count on you, Brenda.”
So Mike moved into Brenda’s rental place. It wasn’t bad. He paid her on the regular. He even got her talking, just for old time’s sake, which was pretty good considering how they’d left it the last time. Brenda could always remember the good times, and that’s what mattered. Well that, and the rent money, of course. Mike and Brenda never wrote anything down, never signed anything—it was just a verbal month-to-month lease with no timeframe.
Three months in and Mike’s old habits showed up again. He wasn’t a bad man, but he did get a little too amorous with other men’s wives. He got in a fight and got arrested.
Well, there’s Brenda with a rental place and nobody living in it, and she can’t collect rent on it because Mike’s not working while he’s in jail. And it’s a verbal lease. She talked to him while he was behind bars and he agreed to a termination of the lease, but his possessions were still there.
By the Statute of Frauds, certain agreements are important enough that you have to have them in writing in order to be enforceable, including any contract that cannot be completed in one year. If a lease is for more than one year and is not in writing, it is not enforceable. Brenda and Mike had verbally agreed to a month-to-month lease, and since it had been in place only three months—not a full year—that lease was enforceable, though it wasn’t in writing.
When Mike was conspicuously absent from the premises for fifteen days (because he was in jail) with no rent paid (also because he was in jail), Brenda filed an Eviction Action with a Writ of Possession. Then she put Mike’s stuff on the curb.
Brenda went home, put her feet up, and called her pregnant sister. They exchanged unpleasantries, then Brenda said, “Great news, Sis, you know how you got to keep the house in the divorce and your ex got the expensive furniture? Well your luxury sofa and your prize dining room set, it’s all on the curb, and today is garbage day.”
Let that simmer for a minute.
Friends don’t let friends move in without a written lease. It’s always better to put an agreement in writing, so you can remember what you agreed to. Then there’s no ambiguity. Can you remember the first word of this article without looking back?
That being said, landlords do have legal rights—even with verbal agreements. You’ve got to play by the rules, but you can get your property back with minimal loss of rent. It can be done, might even be interesting.
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