I personally wrote up a contract for deed for a home I have. Is the contract legal beings I never filed it at the court house? I want to evict the tenants because only half the time do they pay on the 1st as stated in the contract and I also received a notice from the county that if the property wasn't cleaned by a certain date I would be fined $500 because they have turned it into a junk yard and they have totally trashed the inside of the house. Do I have any legal rights to do anything and is this written contract valid? One more thing part of the contract reads if the buyer fails to make the payment or fail to perform any of the covenants hereof the sellar may declare this contract forfieted. What is covenant and has this been broken?

Well, contracts for deed have become very controversial. All but illegal in some states.

I think you need to hire an attorney before you do anything else. A contract for deed that doesn't follow certain laws (in TX, anyway) gives the buyer a TON of recourse against the seller.

First if contracts for deed are legal in your state, then it is legal, and covenants, well they are what you wrote into yours, what conditions did you make, do they have to furnish insurance, do they have to keep property clean, keep grass cut. What conditions did you make to void the contract. What was the status of their down payment if they default, it all has to be written in the contract.

So first you have to inform them of their being in default and why, normally giving them notice to bring it into compliance.

So if you did not include all of this, you can really be "screwed" so to speak, and they could end up living there for months before you could ever evict and not pay a penny if you did not do the contract right.

If I did not mention it, most contract for deeds are not filed at the court house, since there should not have been any transfer of ownership