I just want to make sure I'm doing this the right way, so I figured I'd ask you guys :)

In Wisconsin, we have a couple that's renting an apartment from us. After doing a walk-through yesterday, we found multiple holes in walls and damage to 2 doors from the boyfriend(the guy has an uncontrollable temper which has been evidenced by ourselves and the neighbors). The girlfriend said she wants to stay in the apartment and actually asked us to evict him. She even brought up the idea of pretending she's moving out just to get him out of the apartment and then signing a new lease with us in just her name. Their lease doesn't expire until March 2009.

We want the girlfriend to stay because she's really decent; she keeps the apartment picked up and pays her rent and utilities on time. So can we legally evict only the boyfriend? Or can we "evict" both of them and then sign a new lease with her or would that create bigger legal problems?

When you evict a tenant you are terminating their lease. To be safe you should terminate the lease completely, evict both and sign a new lease with the tenant you want to keep.

Assuming that the lease is worded with the tenants being "jointly and severably liable" (most common type of lease), legally, you would need to file an eviction in both of their names and follow it through on both of them to the point that he leaves. I say legally, because it's not uncommon to do it on just one tenant with the result being that the other will just go away along with the one you're evicting. Lots of landlords I know just file on one person because it's cheaper and the tenants usually don't know the difference.

I'd say that your best bet would be if she can "act" her way through it and convince him enough to get him out that would be the way to go. If she's willing to go through the motions of starting to pack stuff and "look for another place to live", etc she might be able to pull it off. (That's if you don't want to file on her, too.)

Once "they" are gone you can resign a brand new lease with just her and do whatever you want.

I will caution you from personal experience... I've had this EXACT situation more than once. One time we got the guy out and off the lease and then she wound up letting him back within a few weeks as her "guest". Big, long mess. Another time we had this whole plan worked out with the girl, we were supposedly on the same team trying to get rid of him, etc. In the end (he may have beat it out of her?? )she wound up telling him the whole plan of what we were trying to do and the both wound up bailing out. ANOTHER time we successfully got rid of a girls jerky boyfriend only to have another live-in show up within a couple of months that was just as bad as the first one.

Thanks to both of you. We just wanted to make sure we're doing it legally; we don't want the boyfriend coming back and suing us over something bogus.

Thanks to both of you. We just wanted to make sure we're doing it legally; we don't want the boyfriend coming back and suing us over something bogus.

Right... I don't really think he could come back after you. But what he might be able to do - depending on the judge - is have the eviction thrown out because it wasn't filed "properly", and then you'd have to start all over.