How does the prohibition on late rent fees work in MA? In Massachusetts, USA, a landlord cannot charge interest or a penalty on late rent until 30 days after the due date. However, the landlord can begin the eviction process immediately, even if the rent is only one day overdue. The landlord also cannot use a reverse penalty clause to encourage you to pay early. For example, it is illegal for a landlord to reduce the rent by 10% if the rent is paid within the first five days of the month. Citation Does this mean that if you pay rent say, five (5) days late, the landlord may charge a late fee as long as it is not actually charged until 30 days after the original due date? Or must the payment be 30 days overdue to charge a late fee at all? The wording to me seems to put a restriction on what time the landlord can charge a fee, not what circumstances they may charge under.
The statute provides that "No lease or other rental agreement shall impose any interest or penalty for failure to pay rent until thirty days after such rent shall have been due." Mass. Gen. Law ch. 186 § 15B(1)(a)(iii). It would seem that if the rent is fully paid before the thirty days are up, there is no longer a "failure to pay rent" and so no late fee to be paid. I have searched and have found no caselaw providing a different interpretation of the issue, but I am not a lawyer and this, of course, is not legal advice.
Bankruptcy does not obliterate legal financial obligations (taxes that you owe, fines, etc.). Fines either do or do not (any more) accrue interest, depending on jurisdiction. Fines for criminal conviction can accrue interest. By law, no fine can be unreasonable, but there is no simple determination of what is reasonable versus unreasonable. The matter reduces to whether the penalty would be grossly disproportionate to the gravity of the offense. Federal law suggests a upper-ballpark of $250,000 for an individual felony or $5,000 for an infraction, but there is no actual upper limit, for example a crime resulting in pecuniary gain may receive a fine of twice that gain, so fines can be in the hundreds of billions of dollars. The government can seize property including wages in order to satisfy a legal financial obligation. However, you can not be imprisoned because of an unpaid fine, although you can be imprisoned for willfully not paying a fine when ordered to do so (there is no legal clarity as to what constitutes "willful" non-payment). As noted in this article, seemingly small fines can balloon to large sums (they cite an example of a 4-fold increase in initial fine owing to interest and similar increases.
he responded 17 days late. How can I forestall the court accepting this late response? Your chances are very slim if the defendant &quot;provide[s] a reasonable excuse for the delay and demonstrate[s] a potentially meritorious defense to the action&quot;. Wells Fargo Bank v. Chateau, 36 Misc.3d 280-281 (2012) (brackets added, citations omitted). The extent of the delay is listed among the relevant factors in the &quot;discretionary, sui generis determination to be made by the court&quot; of whether the excuse is reasonable, Id. EHS Quickstops Corp. v. GRJH, Inc., 112 A.D.3d 577, 578 (2013) explains that motions for default judgment are denied by virtue &quot;of the lack of prejudice to the plaintiffs resulting from the short delay in serving an answer, the lack of willfulness on the part of the defendant, the existence of a potentially meritorious defense, and the public policy favoring the resolution of cases on the merits&quot;. In the absence of further context, the sole delay of 17 days seems unlikely to outweigh the aforementioned criteria.
I'll take Washington state law to be typical. RCW 9a.56.060 is the criminal law governing rubber checks. Writing a check which you know at the time of drawing or delivering a check that has insufficient fund with intent to defraud is a crime. That's not the case here. It might appear to be theft on the part of the landlord, except that In any prosecution for theft, it shall be a sufficient defense that: (a) The property or service was appropriated openly and avowedly under a claim of title made in good faith, even though the claim be untenable That is, he quite reasonably believed that it was intended for him (it is made out to him). As for civil liability, your &quot;liability&quot; arises from your contract with your bank, and unless you have a remarkable &quot;not my fault&quot; clause in the checking account agreement, you can't sue the bank to avoid the overdraft fees (except if bank breaches a promise to not cash a postdated check until the date written on the check, and the check is dated for some time after the check was deposited). You might attempt to sue the landlord, since his action caused you harm: if his act was negligent. If the rent was already due and you were in arrears, the landlord's act of taking the check to apply to your rent obligation (thus saving you from rent late fees) is what a reasonable person would do. But if the check was for rent due a month in the future, a reasonable person would know that they are not owed the rent at this time, and it is highly unlikely that you intended to hand over the check right now: taking and depositing the check would be neglectful of the ordinary care that the landlord owes you as a tenant, and he could be found liable for the damage that he did. It is suggested in a comment by Ryan M that violation of the notice requirement under the Residential Landlord-Tenant act negates a good faith defense. State v. Hicks, 102 Wn.2d 182 concludes that &quot;Animus furandi&quot;, or the intent to steal, is an essential element of the crime of robbery ... the good faith claim of title defense negates the intent element of robbery Nothing in the statutes or case law exists which demands completely clean hands in invoking a good faith defense. Use of force is illegal; but use of force in self defense is legal. The courts have not ruled that a person is deprived of that defense if they have committed a criminal act (landlord entering a residence is not a crime, it is a civil wrong), or if they have committed a tort act.
http://www.tenantslegalcenter.com/html/eviction_notices.html 3 DAY NOTICE TO CURE BREACH (sometimes called PERFORM COVENANT) OR QUIT is used to notify a tenant that he/she has 3 days to do or stop doing something as per the rental agreement or the law. The tenant can comply with the notice or vacate within the 3 days. If the tenant vacates within the 3 days, he/she is NOT relieved from the rent obligation under the lease or rental agreement. So, the notice must be based on a law and/or the lease agreement. Presumably, the law and/or lease provision must be cited in the notice. The City of San Diego has a GOOD CAUSE law (Right to Know Ordinance) protecting certain tenants in a residential tenancy of at least TWO years and that good cause must be written in the notice. You state that you've been there seven years, so this law applies. To count the days of a notice, you begin on the next day after service as the first day. Weekends and holidays are counted but the last day of a notice to act generally may not land on a weekend or holiday. If it does, and if applicable to that notice, the "last day" can carry over to the next business day. For example, if a 3 day notice to pay rent is served on a Thursday, we count Friday as the first day Sunday is the third day. Since the last day of this type of notice cannot be a Sunday, the "third day" is then Monday (giving the tenant four days instead of three) to pay the rent. If that Monday was a legal holiday, then Tuesday would then be the "third" day (giving the tenant five days instead of three) to pay the rent. http://www.rogerfranklin.org/Instructions_for_Landlords_2017.pdf B. SERVE THE THREE-DAY NOTICE 1. After the Three-Day Notice has been filled out and signed, you must serve it on the tenant. The Three-Day Notice may be served either: (a) By delivering a copy to the tenant personally, or (b) If the tenant is absent from is place of residence and from his usual place of business, by leaving a copy with some person over the age of eighteen (18) years at either place, AND mailing a copy of the Three-Day Notice addressed to the tenant, postage prepaid, first-class mail, to his place of residence; or (c) If such place of residence and business cannot be ascertained and a person over the age of eighteen cannot be found at the tenant’s residence, then by affixing a copy of the Three-Day Notice in a conspicuous place on the property, AND mailing a copy of the Three Day Notice to the tenant at his residence. So if the notice was just left at your apartment, and was not delivered personally or mailed, then the service is invalid.
Your question is not particularly clear, but it sounds like you're describing a situation where: The tenant doesn't pay the rent The landlord files an action to evict the tenant, and The tenant files a request for a jury trial. The act of filing for a jury trial doesn't guarantee that the tenant won't be evicted, but it will likely make the eviction process more time-consuming and expensive for the landlord. I'm assuming the tenant is entitled to a jury trial--otherwise this would be useless as a stalling tactic. In that case, the question you really want answered is, can the landlord force the tenant to waive any right to a jury trial by contract, for example in the lease? In California, the answer is no. The linked document suggests that you may be able to specify some form of ADR, which would avoid the expense of a jury trial, but the California courts won't let you get away with a straight jury trial waiver.
I assume the lease does not clarify what the effective date for cancellation of utilities should be: when you "officially abandon" the property, or when the 30-day notice elapses. Who is responsible for the damage? At least under a principle of equity, the landlord is responsible for the damages. That is because, once you have returned the keys and officially abandoned the property, you have no control on how or whether utilities are consumed or (ab-)used thereafter. For instance, if sometime after the 30th of July a person breaks in that rental unit and extracts tremendous quantities of power or gas, that would lead to the inequitable outcome that the utilities company would charge you if your name is still in the utilities company's records. Similarly, it would be unreasonable and inequitable to expect you to essentially insure the landlord (by keeping your name on the utilities) despite his full awareness that you no longer are there.
Can the seller enter a formal agreement with the tenants in which the seller pays a sum of money and in return the tenants vacate the premises before the closing date, and would such agreement hold over the tenants legal right to remain on premises past the closing date? Maybe. It depends on tenancy law in Nova Scotia. Notwithstanding, given that the tenants are “difficult”, what are your plans if they take the cash and don’t move out? What happens if the sale goes though under the assumption that the tenants have left, and in fact the tenants are still occupying the premises? Why would the buyer settle under an “assumption”? At the time of settlement either the tenants have left (so settlement happens) or the haven’t (so the vendor is in breach, settlement doesn’t happen and the buyer decides whether to rescind the contract and claim damages or affirm the contract and claim damages). What guarantees and proofs can the buyer demand as to the vacant status of the property? They take the keys and walk into it. What other questions should the buyer be asking? They should be asking: “Will you be in a position to fulfil your obligations under the contract?”