Co-tenant not paying rent

Jamieb1988

pmlindyloo wrote: »

Indeed a complete and utter mess!

My suggestion would be write to the management guy and ask for your landlord's name and address.

Useful link here:


When you get it you should inform the landlord that there is a complete mess up as regarding contracts/deposit/sub letting/whatever you want to mention.

Say that you have been taking advice and if you do not hear from them within 7 days you will be seeking legal advice as regards your position.

Since you want to stay there I would be as conciliatory as you can be, e.g. stressing your 'concern' at what is happening, how much you want to stay, management bloke asking you to do things (sorry that sounds awful!) that appear to be incorrect, asking if LL is aware of what is going on.

Seems to be that you have been put in a horrid position. In the end the LL is responsible and he is probably totally unaware of what is going on - gets the rent and leaves the rest to his 'agent'. Put him in the picture.

If you do not get the landlord's address then you will need to contact Shelter and get some help.

Just continue to pay your rent and let the LL sort this out.

As far as I'm aware the chap who i'm dealing with is a family friend of the LL so I highly doubt they'll be shocked or quite frankly bothered that he's telling me to evict people.

Ok - I'm going to contact Shelter tomorrow to see how to progress although I can't see this ending well!

Jamieb1988

RAS wrote: »

What date does the contract claim to start? And what dates does it end?

It'll be from August - August (17th if memory serves).

Jamieb1988

Just to summarise - shall I go back to the chap who's looking after the properties saying I don't want to get involved and it's an issue you need to pick up with the tenant? Or, shall I go back to the current co-tenant (whilst CC'ing in the other tenants) saying we're going to be liable for the rent if you don't pay the money, so please can you just pay it or effectively move out?

Jamieb1988

So I've gone back to the LL and said I cannot simply give notice to the co-tenant due to me not being a LL and they're not subletting from me. I then asked him if the new tenants were assigned places on the original contract and if it's joint and several to which his reply was:

"The agreement from previous has now been replaced with this new one, (that the other two tenants and I have signed) but with the same dates (Aug - Aug). "If" there was only 3 tenants then the total house rent is due by all 3, as there is a 4th but not willing to sign then she is not legally allowed to be in the property, but by default we have a deposit and held under the dps scheme so she has a case with the person who she replace "not us". As you are the main "lead tenant" and was yours and the original other 3 who rented the house - responsibilities to find replacements then she is in effect a co-tenant. It will be in your interests for the house to meet and discuss a way forward. We can only evict you all as it's 1 agreement for the whole house, if this isn't sorted by the weekend then I think they (the LL) will just notify us to give notice to all, and start a fresh at the end of the agreement. This is a serious matter as non payment of rent isn't our responsibility, it's the houses responsibility to have the full rent paid on the due date."

I'm quite confused by this - does this basically mean that I am personally liable for the next two months rent of the house until the new tenancy kicks in (august)?

DRP

Jamieb1988 wrote: »

So I've gone back to the LL and said I cannot simply give notice to the co-tenant due to me not being a LL and they're not subletting from me. I then asked him if the new tenants were assigned places on the original contract and if it's joint and several to which his reply was:

"The agreement from previous has now been replaced with this new one, (that the other two tenants and I have signed) but with the same dates (Aug - Aug). "If" there was only 3 tenants then the total house rent is due by all 3, as there is a 4th but not willing to sign then she is not legally allowed to be in the property, but by default we have a deposit and held under the dps scheme so she has a case with the person who she replace "not us". As you are the main "lead tenant" and was yours and the original other 3 who rented the house - responsibilities to find replacements then she is in effect a co-tenant. It will be in your interests for the house to meet and discuss a way forward. We can only evict you all as it's 1 agreement for the whole house, if this isn't sorted by the weekend then I think they (the LL) will just notify us to give notice to all, and start a fresh at the end of the agreement. This is a serious matter as non payment of rent isn't our responsibility, it's the houses responsibility to have the full rent paid on the due date."

I'm quite confused by this - does this basically mean that I am personally liable for the next two months rent of the house until the new tenancy kicks in (august)?

is it even legal to date a contract as aug last year , but to sign it in April the next year?

tbs624

Jamieb1988 wrote: »

Ok - I'm going to contact Shelter tomorrow to see how to progress although I can't see this ending well!

You posted this on the 14th, so did you speak to someone at Shelter? If yes, what did they say? If no, you need to get on and call them.

princeofpounds

Hi again Jamie.

Let me explain why it's so difficult for people to give you advice on what to do going forward.

This case is a bit like an onion, which we've had to peel back and back to get at extra layers of detail.

I think we're finally close to what the truth is, but it's hard for us to progress it.

There clearly has been a change in the nature of the tenancy contracts as the old people moved out and the new ones moved in.

As I mentioned earlier on, the original contract might continue, but with the new people 'assigned' the rights and responsibilities of the old ones, and you maintaining your position in relation to the original tenancy in all respects.

Or, a new tenancy might have been established. This new tenancy would mean that the original tenancy no longer exists. The new tenancy might be the same as the old one, or it might take a totally different form (for example, if nothing was specifically agreed, legally it could default to the bare-bones basic form outlined in law for an AST).

Now, the answer to all this should be clear in what you agreed between all the parties, and backed up by appropriate paperwork.

However, when the paperwork is a mess, and it's even unclear what all the various parties have agreed with one another, it's really hard to work out what happened, legally-speaking.

In such circumstances, to establish what the contract actually was, a court can look not just at paperwork, not just listen to verbal testimony, but also at how people have acted, because that can display an intention to form a contract.

To put that in simple terms, if you have a property, give me a key, I move in and pay you regular money, we have established a tenancy. Even if we sign no paperwork. Even if we never say a word to each other.

In your situation, it becomes a kind of a guessing game for us. We don't know the state of the paperwork, we don't know what everyone has verbally agreed with each other, and we don't know how you have all acted. So we can't deduce the state of the tenancy contract that's currently in effect.

This is a particularly telling passage:

I then asked him if the new tenants were assigned places on the original contract and if it's joint and several to which his reply was:

"The agreement from previous has now been replaced with this new one...

You should KNOW what was agreed, unless nothing was agreed at all. The language you use is curiously passive, as if your LL and co-tenants can force a new agreement onto you without your consent. Of course they can't. They certainly can't tell you agreement will be 'replaced' unilaterally.

But you appear to have implicitly accepted something, but that something is so vague we don't know how to tell you how to react to this.

So, my question to you is, given

a) any paperwork you signed
b) any conversations or written communication you had
c) the way you acted and intended things to be

what kind of arrangement did you think you were getting into when you let 3 strangers into the house that you and your ex co-T had an exclusive tenancy on?

For me, three scenarios are most likely (and I can't claim perfect accuracy here as the mental contortions get me muddled!):

1) The original contract was assigned to the new co-Ts.

In this instance, you will likely be jointly liable. On the other hand, you would have the ability to give notice and end the tenancy for all members. And everyone's rights and responsibilities would be clear.

This scenario would be most likely if you all got together to agree the assignment, the deposits were refunded to the outgoing tenants by those incoming and so on.

2) A new tenancy was created, where you are all joint tenants

In this situation, your responsibilities are likely similar to your old tenancy (unless you agreed something different) but the timings of how you can react to things will be different.

This would be evidenced by all of you getting together to sign a new tenancy agreement. The landlord would have checked out and refunded the deposits of the previous tenants, collection new ones.

3) Mutiple new tenancies were created between the LL and tenants or groups of tenants. These are not joint.

In this situation, of course you can't give notice on the other people's tenancies, but then neither are you jointly liable for their actions.

This would have been evidenced by the LL signing different tenancies with different parties. The old tenants would be most likely checked out and deposits collected from the new ones.

So, what are your thoughts? Remember there could be other evidence, you might have agreed to things that you never signed contracts for, etc.

If the LL sues you, you will have to say clearly in court what you think you agreed to, be able to give evidence to back it up, and stick to your story. You wouldn't be able to ask your landlord what they think!

---

I think it's possible that given that it sounds like a 'new' tenancy agreement was signed, but that you had no part in signing it, that you are not joint with the other tenants who did sign it. That might protect you from joint and several liability. But I'm really not sure, I don't know if you sent an email saying you were fine with the general idea of a joint tenancy or whatever.

And no, you can't backdate a tenancy.

Now I'm going to go and dunk my head in a bucket of ice

terryw

Well done prince! You deserve a bottle of gin to go with the ice for that post.

J_i_m

A bottle? I think he deserves the whole darned distillery!

My advise would have been to serve notice and move out and find a landlord who kept things simple