Recently went to court with an eviction. After getting behind close to two months rent I started the process. Tenant is a mother with two kids. She's always late, but this is the first time I didn't see all the rent. Went behind in September, and beginning of October I hired an attorney and paperwork was filed with the sheriff. I believe the first letter to go out was a notice to quit, meaning she had to pay rent or leave in 10 days. That of course didn't work so the next letter with a trial date was sent out getting me a court date of November 20. During the time she stopped paying rent we had a roof leak which went into her apartment, water came into one of the lights, etc. Not that serious, but had to do some ceiling work, and asked her to let me know if there's any more water issues etc, and that I'd need to repaint the ceiling. A 4X8 Section had some issues, wanted to first let it dry out, then try to repaint, sand off rough spots, before opening up the ceiling. Also. wanted to make sure the roof wasn't leaking anymore. After this, she says she can't pay any rent this month because all of her clothes were ruined.....lol
Fast forward to court day. I'm there on time with my attorney, she doesn't show up. We win the motion. We walk out of the court room when she strolls in at 9:45am, MIND you report time was 830am. We stick around and see that the people at the court house are helping her vacate the judgement. Lovely, right! End up in mediation, where she tells the mediator she knows her rights etc, and stopped paying rent because of the roof leak. The mediator, then says but you stopped paying before this incident? Where is the money now....you should have withheld the $2700 owed, then brought it here. Tenant then is speechless. I show the mediator I have receipts etc, and a property maintenance log showing the roof was patched the day after the leak and ceiling repaired within a week. She maintains the ceiling looks awful, still leaking, and leaks in another room, where additionally the electricity doesn't work either, to which I just find out. As a result tenant says she called the board of health because of the cracks in the ceiling and no electricity. Mediator then asks her why that was done, when you didn't let me in to fix after I called to check?
Mind you I called her a few weeks back to check on the ceiling etc, but never got a call back, so I figured everything was fine. Mediator then asks how much money do you have today? 0$. When can you leave? March... At this point the mediator is not happy because she knows the tenant is unreasonable and I have all my ducks in a line. The end result is she's moving out by Jan2, but I get security deposit. If not moved out i get the execution letter and she goes 2 days later regardless. The court gives her a housing advocate to help find housing. The mediator asks if in good faith I will repair the roof and try to find an electrician. Come to find out I enter the apartment yesterday, and one of the rooms with no electricity has no ceiling damage, and the damaged ceiling really doesn't look that bad!
I knew regardless I'd never seen the 3 months lost rent. Also lost about $1000 for attorney fees etc. Evictions are terrible in MA. The mediators do a great job trying to get a resolution, but when you deal with people who just don't care about life, you can't win. My only mistake was not having more pictures of when we finished repairing the ceiling. I will be happy when she's out, getting. a new roof soon, and then will fix electricity etc. Just wanted to write a brief summary of what it like to REALLY go through the legal process here in MA, and maybe it will help someone else!
