Evicting an adult child

laurel7172

For unhappy reasons I don't want to share unless absolutely necessary, a friend of a friend would like an adult offspring to leave the family home.

It's a council house, with the tenancy in dad's sole name.

Offspring has responded to requests to leave with threats of legal action/claims that removing them will require expensive documents from a solicitor. They are supposed to pay a minimal amount for bed and board, but don't.

Far from needing a solicitor, I imagined mum and dad could pretty much change the locks and leave the adult offspring's bags on the doorstep, if they wanted to.

Can somebody please tell me the actual legalities of this situation?

Thank you

BitterAndTwisted

If the adult child is not named on the tenancy they can be asked to leave and/or locked out any time it suits.

Foxy-Stoat_3

You can ask children 16 or over to leave...look on Shelter for advice.

Debt_Free_Chick

Pretty sure that Mum & Dad can change the locks and prevent access to property. Pretty sure that the Local Authority can not and will not support the adult offspring and will not help them to re-gain access to the property.

Would an anonymous call to the Local Authority - who is the Landlord and therefore holds all the legal powers - help here?

Building_Surveyor

Change the locks, pack their stuff up in bin liners and turf them out if need be... If they're going to be awkward about it.

Legalities? They are not a tenant ...

BitterAndTwisted

Mum and Dad need to give them a deadline for when to make alternative arrangements or they will pack their stuff up and change the locks. And mean it. If s/he aren't paying any board they should have enough spare cash to save up and move into a flat or house-share.

Annisele

I think (but am not certain) that an adult child in that situation would technically be an 'excluded occupier'. That would mean the Dad (as the only person named on the tenancy agreement) could evict the offspring by giving 'reasonable notice'.

The Dad has absolutely no right to use violence or physical force, no right to damage any of the offspring's belongings, and no right to threaten those things. But I think he can change the locks after giving reasonable notice. What counts as reasonable will depend on the situation.

Shelter has some information here (that's aimed at people in the offspring's position, but might be useful the other way).

SailorSam

If they're going to throw him out like that it may be a good idea to have a couple of friends there in case any trouble kicks off.

Dimey

Good advice from all.

If you decide to give say one month's notice (in writing and keep a copy) , then be careful during that period as you don't want the young person to steal or destroy anything or be abusive while they still have access.

Make sure they are never alone on the house so the young person can't lock you out and claim squatters rights.

Obviously change the locks on the end of notice day, while the young person is out. If the belongings haven't been taken then package up and leave them outside - say in the shed. Give another letter of notice for the young person to remove their belongings from the shed within two weeks or you will throw them away.

Maybe even get cctv depending on how dire the situation is.

Edit : - Oh, and if the young person won't go at the end of the notice period I think you can call the police to see them off the premises. Might be worth checking that with the local station if you anticipate any trouble.

gay_guy

To the op,

Tell them that this is cruel what their are doing, fair enough if their are not paying for board but throwing them out on the street with no where to go mostly this time of year when its bad winter and don't forget snow will be here soon. how can the parents sleep at night for doing this?

If their can't pay or won't pay can the parents not give them a few weeks or months to find another place?

We are already in a mess and did you see on daybreak yesturday that a lot of children will be homeless this christmas.

I know you stated it's a adult but its still the same thing when the person has no where to go and their will sleep rough in this bad weather.

moneyistooshorttomention

We are only hearing one side of things here, but I presume this adult offspring is someone who is doing something totally unacceptable, eg drug-taking and stealing from parents to fund the habit/being physically violent/etc (in other words behaviour that its totally not reasonable to be subjected to).

I guess we can only assume that parents are at wits end here and wouldn't throw out their offspring if they were a reasonably normal sort of "child" and it was just a case of them earning enough money to pay for "keep", but refusing to do so (ie selfish..but not worse than that).

That was my assumption anyway, ie that this offspring is a LOT worse than particularly selfish (but otherwise normal).

I suppose this is a case of Tough Love being exercised by normal parents against a way-worse-than-unruly "child".