My tenant took in a roommate (with my consent) but said roommate has never paid any of the agreed upon rent. The arrangement is not working out and now we need to get the roommate to move out. Can this be done without going to court? There has never been anything in writing and no lease is involved.

My tenant took in a roomate (with my consent) but said roomate has never paid any of the agreed upon rent. The arrangement is not working out and now we need to get the roomate to move out. Can this be done without going to court? There has never been anything in writing and no lease is involved.


A lot depends on the State but I would say 99% of the time you have to evict.

Is the roommate YOUR tenant? Were they supposed to be paying rent to you? Or were they sub-leasing from the original tenant and were supposed to pay them a portion of the rent? That will determine WHO their landlord actually is.

Then, there's a link to each state's LL / tenant laws in a sticky at the top of this forum. Hopefully you're already familiar with them? It varies quite a bit from state - to - state, but in general you'll (or the original tenant'll) give this person a "pay or quit" notice. That's usually somewhere between 3 - 5 days, commonly referred to as a "3 day notice", or "5 day". Then if they don't pay or vacate by the end of that time frame you would go to the Justice of the Peace or Magistrate for your precinct and file an eviction suit.

Do you want them to be able to stay if they pay? That's one of the down sides of eviction for non-payment of rent. In some places you basically HAVE to accept it. In other places, once they're late it's totally up to you whether to accept late payment or not.