Is there an inherent legal obligation to repay a guarantor? So as I understand a guarantor is liable to pay rent arrears if the tenant is unable, unwilling, or just doesn't pay. I am wondering if such an occasion arose and the landlord contacted the guarantor to pay, and they did, would the tenant, without a written agreement specific to that occasion, have any inherent legal obligation to repay the guarantor for the arrears. Does the use of a guarantor give the tenant an automatic legal responsibility to repay them?
united-states Does the use of a guarantor give the tenant an automatic legal responsibility to repay them? Yes, unless a contract expressly says otherwise. A guarantor has the right to recover what the guarantor had to pay from the primary person obligated on a debt that are the same as the creditor who the guarantor pays unless a contract or statute says otherwise. This right is called the right to subrogation. The subrogation rights of a guarantor are a matter of equitable principles set forth in case law precedents (and in the case of promissory note, a statutory right under the Uniform Commercial Code, see, e.g., Colo. Rev. Statutes § 4-3-419(e)), even though best practice is to formally state that in a guarantee agreement. See, e.g., Behlen Mfg. Co. v. First Nat. Bank of Englewood, 28 Colo.App. 300, 472 P.2d 703 (1970). (&quot;‘It is well settled that where one secondarily liable is called on to make good on his obligation and pays the debt, he steps into the shoes of the former creditor. He becomes subrogated to all the rights of the creditor against the principal debtor, including the security given to secure the debt.’&quot;). The law as stated in an insurance context is that: When an insurer reimburses a victim for damages pursuant to a claim under the victim's insurance policy, the insurer enjoys a right to subrogation, under which he can stand in the victim's shoes and collect the reimbursed amount from the party responsible for the damages. Am. Family Mut. Ins. Co. v. DeWitt, 218 P.3d 318, 323 (Colo.2009). The right can arise pursuant to an express provision in the insurance policy—a “conventional” subrogation right—or under principals of equity—an “equitable” subrogation right. Id. Ferrellgas, Inc. v. Yeiser, 247 P.3d 1022, 1027 (Colo. 2011). But, the law of subrogation of guarantors is the same as that of insurers, who are both a subset of people who are called &quot;sureties.&quot; Colorado's common law right is referenced obliquely in its statute governing contribution rights (see below) for sureties: Nothing in sections 13-50-102 to 13-50-104 affects or changes the right of a surety who has paid his proportionate share of an indebtedness of recovering the same from his principal debtor. Colo. Rev. Stat. Ann. § 13-50-104. Similarly, in the case of a release of some but not all joint debtors or guarantors, Colorado has a (widely adopted model) statute which states more affirmatively: In case one or more joint debtors are released, no one of the remaining debtors shall be liable for more than his proportionate share of the indebtedness, unless he is the principal debtor and the debtor released was his surety, in which case the principal debtor is liable for the whole of the remainder of the indebtedness. Colo. Rev. Stat. Ann. § 13-50-103. When there are multiple debtors, or multiple guarantors, the obligation is generally joint and several, so that the entire debt may be collected by the creditor from any one of them, not just their fair share of the debt. But, there is also a common law and statutory right for guarantors who pay more than their fair share of a guarantee obligation upon which there are multiple guarantors to recover the fair share of any guarantor who did not pay their fair share of the guaranteed debt from that other guarantor in an action for contribution. It is well established that guarantors paying more than their proportionate share of an obligation are entitled to contribution from other guarantors who are jointly and severally liable for the obligation. Taylor v. Hake, 92 Colo. 330, 20 P.2d 546[.] Stieben v. Korby, 533 P.2d 530, 531 (Colo. App. 1975). Incidentally, this is an area of law upon which United States law is generally very uniform, even though it is, as most things are in U.S. law, a matter of state law and not a matter of federal law, in most cases.
You could sue them for commercially exploiting your image without permission, so the waiver is necessary. It is entirely legal to require of tenants (even if weird) that they be part of an advertising campaign, in a specified way: it's also your right to refuse to sign. There is a minuscule chance that there is a local ordinance prohibiting such a clause.
There don't appear to be any Santa Clara-specific laws on the matter, so California law (including this) would govern this situation. A landlord generally has an obligation to maintain the premise in habitable condition (can't stick you with the bill for repairing the water main), and has to fulfill the obligations of the lease (if the lease says that a working washing machine is part of the premise, the landlord has to fix it if it breaks). An AC is not part of what makes a unit &quot;habitable&quot; in the legal sense. You should have to scrutinize exactly what the lease says about the AC, but saying that it is provided &quot;as is&quot; indicates that the landlord is disclaiming any obligation to fix it if it breaks. You are allowed to use it, but if it breaks, he won't fix it. The fact that he has no obligation to fix it does not relieve you of your duty to care for his property (irrespective of the fact that it was abandoned by a prior tenant – there's a notification procedure regarding abandoned real property, which I assume the landlord followed so it is his AC). Your obligation to compensate the landlord for damaging his property is not triggered by his legal obligation to maintain the property, it is triggered by the fact that it is his property. So you are legally on the hook: under §1929, &quot;The hirer of a thing must repair all deteriorations or injuries thereto occasioned by his want of ordinary care&quot;. However, the size of the hook is not clear: the cost of replacement or repair could be vastly higher than the actual value of the unit. There is a legal concept of &quot;unjust enrichment&quot; that could be applicable, if the landlord plans to bill you $500 for a new AC which he got for free, but you'd probably need to hire a lawyer to make a solid legal argument in court.
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.
am I obligated to pay this fee? Yes. You entered the lease despite been aware of the existence of that fee. That meets the contract law tenet that an agreement be entered knowingly and willfully. Does it not invoke an issue where they can arbitrarily set the price? If the landlord requires a fee that is unreasonably high, that would violate the contract law covenant of good faith and fair dealing. As such, that part would be unenforceable, meaning that the landlord may only charge a reasonable fee. Likewise, unless the lease clearly entitles the landlord to decide the telecom fee arbitrarily, the lease would fail to meet that extent of the aforementioned tenet of a contract being entered knowingly. Does this fall under the category of lease addendum? The form (or format) in which the requirement of telecom fee was mentioned --and agreed upon-- does not matter. The landlord only would need to prove that the tenant was --or should have been-- aware of that fee. Usually the landlord can prove that by showing/producing in court the lease with tenant's signature.
Your father's probate estate is responsible for the repairs (assuming that your father owned the property outright and not through an entity, in which case the entity would be responsible). To the extent you accept rent, you are effectively acting as an agent of your father's estate in anticipation of being appointed to administer his estate. As his likely successor in the intestate estate, you have an interest in making the repairs, if urgent and if this mitigates the long term cost of the repairs and of the liability to the tenant for not making repairs promptly, that you would ultimately end up bearing. Often, it is possible to get appointed fairly quickly, at least on an emergency or temporary basis pending a formal permanent appointment to administer his estate. Doing so, if you could, would take you out of the shadows of acting in reliance on your future authority to act on behalf of your father's estate that you have not yet been granted. If you accept rents and make repairs and then someone else ends up being appointed to administer your father's estate (e.g. because a will you didn't know about is discovered and appoints someone else) and if the person ultimately appointed is displeased with the actions you took without formal authority to do so, rather than ratifying those actions, you are in a bit of a pickle and could incur some legal liability to your father's estate that could reduce your inheritance if there are also other heirs. You also have the option of simply walking away from his estate, not trying to be appointed to administer it, and not trying to claim an inheritance. If you do that, you have no personal liability to your father's tenants at all. If the situation that your father left behind is a truly troublesome mess and his estate is probably insolvent, it may even make rational sense for you to do that. You can't be held responsible for inaction in any way other than the depletion of your inheritance that arises naturally from your inaction. If this is the case, however, you should not accept rents from the tenants or have any other involvement in the management of your father's assets.
It is the tenant's responsibility to understand the written contract. Oral statements about the contract do have to be consistent with the written contract (that is, in the context where you ask the landlord what a particular clause means before signing -- not in the case where you are modifying an existing contract). If I were renting a room and the contract says "Du må betale $1000 hver dag", which I don't understand because my Norwegian is terrible, I would ask about this, and the landlord might say that it means "You must pay $1000 every month", which could be a decent deal. Actually, the clause says "You must pay $1000 every day". When the reality of the situation becomes clear, then it is obvious that we didn't have an agreement in the first place. Perhaps he mis-spoke, or his English is as bad as my Norwegian, but I would not be held to rate in the written contract, assuming that I could back up my claim that he gave me that interpretation: the lease would probably be voided, as not an actual agreement. The underlying principle is that there has to be a "meeting of the minds" where the parties understand what they will get and what they must give, and there was a demonstrable failure of understanding. On the other hand, if I sign a contract without really reading it carefully, and there is a clause in English (which I speak) saying that I have to pay $1000 a day, but I didn't really think about the clause so that in a sense I didn't understand what I had agreed to, well, I may still be on the hook. (On the third hand, a court would probably say that's a ridiculous rent and void the contract on policy grounds). In general, "not my first language" is not a get-out-of-contract card, though attempts to trick people into signing documents in languages that they really have no understanding of won't be successful. Virtually nobody but a lawyer actually understands contractual language, yet contracts are enforced all the time. A contract can be explicitly modified by verbal agreement, or can be entirely verbal, but oral agreements face evidence problems, namely, what exactly did A and B say? It's scientifically well established that parties can be morally certain that the conversation went "A" (for one person) and "Not A" (for the other person). Using "could" rather than "would" in speech makes a huge difference in interpretation. There is a rule, the parol evidence rule, which essentially says that unless there is a good reason to not do so, the contract as written is what is enforced. Even if the conversation had been written into the contract, there's no basis in the contract for objectively determining whether a thing is old and "just broke". So even as an additional clause in the contract, it doesn't afford you a clear escape hatch. You might be able to prove with expert testimony that indeed the pipes had been corroding for a hundred years, and you could not have caused the pipes to burst.
No they can't. The lease says the premises need to be cleaned without going into details how. You cleaned them yourself before moving out. If the landlord was not happy with that, they should have raised their concerns and discussed options. The security deposit that the landlord holds is only supposed to be used when something goes wrong. When something goes wrong, the landlord is supposed to talk, not to silently chop off a slice of the deposit as they please (unless the lease allows it, which it does not here). If the landlord refuses to refund, read the manual and go to small claims court to tell them where to get off.