I moved out of my apartment early and I'm now have to pay a early termination fee of $900. Is there a time frame that I can pay for it before it goes to court or have credit problems.

Whatever you have in writing between yourself and your former landlord is what you would need to go by.

Is the Early Term. Fee in your original lease, or is it something they worked out with you after the fact? Do you have it in writing? If it was a verbal agreement I would highly recommend getting back in touch with the management and telling them you need it in writing, and while you're at it work out a payment schedule with them.

I don't know of any state that includes early termination fees as part of the landlord/tenant property code. If it goes to court I believe it will be the landlord coming after you for the entire duration of your lease.

You have to understand (well, you don't HAVE to, but it will help you out in this case) from a landlord's perspective... the vast, vast majority of the time when someone breaks their lease they're gone and we never see or hear from them again. Arranging with the tenant a "fee" they can pay to buy themselves out of the contact (the lease) is a way of recouping our losses without having to drag someone into court. It's costly to re-lease units - that's why most landlords use at least one year leases. If a tenant agrees to pay and early termination fee and then doesn't pay it immediately it's going to start ot make the landlord think they're just skipping out... like every other schmuck who breaks their lease.

Call them Monday and set up payment arrangements that you can honestly stick with. Then follow through with your payments, and you shouldn't have any worries.

Just my 2 cents.