Issue with roommate tenants

[Natalia Zhou]

I’m not in the middle of this issue with my tenants.

Last year, I rented a property to 3 roommates, X, Y and Z. And received the entire security deposit from X.

This year, Z moved out, X and Y decided to stay, and we verbally agreed that Z will be getting his portion of security deposit from X and Y.

But only until today, when Z send me a “threatening” message, did I found out that he never got the security deposit from his previous roommates X and Y. And the reason is, according to X and Y, that he left a mess behind and owes them other household expenses.

So now, I am involved. Z threatened to sue me for not returning his portion of security deposit.

X and Y agreed to do a new security deposit exchange with me, so technically I returned the security deposit, and they also paid down a new security deposit for their stay. Then the issue will be simply between Z and X/Y.

Is that okay? Will Z still be able to sue me if X/Y and I do this security deposit exchange?