First thanks for all your advice and support through the drama that is dealing with our deadbeat roommate.  Yup, that’s him above. If you see him in the DC  area (that’s where he went) and he wants to be your roommate, run screaming in the opposite direction. (That wasn’t very nice of me)

So we decided not to take him to small claims court.  We know that we would win, but we also know that the deadbeat would not show… ever.  And even if he did show, he would not pay.  And small claims courts doesn’t enforce its ruling, so it wouldn’t be worth all the hassle.

Our next option is to send collections after him.  I haven’t figured out how to do this yet, but it might not be worth is as he already has 8 accounts in collections.  So it’s almost like, what’s one more.  (Yeah, he’s a super deadbeat.)

We haven’t seen or heard from the deadbeat since.  One of us would have probably ended up in jail if that had happened, so that’s a relief.

We ended up paying deadbeat’s rent but luckily we quickly found a 3rd roommate to help pay the rest of July’s rent.  He seems really cool.

Oh SASSY ladies (and gents), if you only knew about the day I’ve had today.

Long story short I have a deadbeat roommate.  Early on he showed deadbeat tendencies, such as smoking in his room even though our lease says not and stinking up the house with the smoke.  But I try to see the good in people, and figured that even though he was a jerk most of the time, he would never go into full asshole mode (sorry for the swears Mom).  Today he showed me wrong.

Essentially for 2 weeks we’ve been asking this dude to pay his rent and for 2 weeks he’s said he wants to use his security deposit to do so. *insert screwface here*  Even though that makes no sense (as our lease isn’t up until 2 months and because there’s a 90% chance we’re not going to get that deposit back (see my “f this couch” album for why)), he insisted that this was his plan.  I thought he might split but I didn’t actually do it.  But he did it.  We came home today and his stuff was gone and his keys were on the coffee table.  This fool really moved out when we were at work.  And had the nerve the email saying essentially “I’m out.  Good luck.”  So so lame.

So what’s a SASSY woman to do?

Initially I kicked myself for not changing the lock on his bedroom door.  I figured as long as his stuff was in the house, he couldn’t possibly just split.  A little research showed me that this was illegal, so it’s best that I didn’t actually get around to changing that lock.

So I turned to my favorite lawyer, of Ask Bari fame, and she gave me some good advise.  Essentially she told me, the moment this fool said I’m not paying rent and moved all his stuff out the apartment, he committed anticipatory repudiation. He breached our contract (the lease) and we can now file breach of contract suits against him.  Even though this will be a mega headache, this dude is messing with my money.  And we can’t have that, can we ladies and gents?

Unfortunately, we still have to pay the full amont of rent in the meantime – we all signed the lease and are therefore responsible for paying rent.  It totally sucks, but I’m not going to mess with our landlady, who is a lawyer, and be taken to court myself.

If he’s smart, he’ll send a check for two months of rent and call it a day.  If he’s an idiot, which is very likely, we will see him in small claims court.

I’ll let you know how it turns out.

peace,
e.