My daughter lived in a bedroom of a 5 bedroom house in New Jersey from Sept 2008 to Feb 2009 while at college. She is 19. My husband and her housemate's father verbally agreed on a monthly rent of $575 for this room. No lease was signed because he forgot to give us one. He is not organized. The other occupants in the house did sign a written lease. Daughter vacated and moved home due to severe medical issues. We have doctor's letters and correspondence with the college to prove this.

The father is suing us in small claims court for the balance of "the contract" even though we did not sign a contract.
I have copies of all "rent" checks and utility checks that we paid to this man until she vacated.
He is not the owner of the house. On record, the owner is his cousin.

NJ law says that in certain circumstances "a tenant can break a lease due to disabling illness". We have proof of this:she was disabled and briefly hospitalized.

Are we liable for the $2000 he claims we owe? He claims we owe him for 3.5 months rent.

For how long of a period did he claim there was a "contract"? If it was for a year or more than he definitely has no claim, since verbal agreements for renting property for a year or more are unenforceable.

If the time was supposed to be less than a year then he can try to sue to enforce the verbal agreement but it will be very difficult for him to prove.

Since there was no written lease she was a month-to-month tenant and she was entitled to terminate the tenancy with 30 days notice. So if she did not give him 30 days advance notice before moving out then at the most he would be entitled to 1 month of rent.

Lisa,
Thank you for your concise answer. We were very confused because of our daughter's sudden illness.

Does this matter? He had all the students "sublet" their rooms for the month of June, 2008; all 5 of students each signed a "sublet" agreement. BUT not one of these students had a lease at the time. There were still prior occupants in the house who could not move out which was the reason for the sublet. My daughter was not given a copy of what she signed. Anyway this was prior to the negotiation with my husband about the "rent" in August 2008.
He claims that my daughter would have had a "one year lease" (June 2008- June 2009).
But we never signed a lease.

He's out of luck. Verbal agreements to rent property must be for a period of less than a year in order to be enforceable. The most your daughter would owe is 1 month if she didn't give him 30 days notice that she was moving out.

Thank you again.
This person has not provided us any documentation that he is the agent for the owner of the house, his cousin, who lives in California. All we found by researching the ownership of the building was that it is owned by the cousin, who also has a mortgage in his name alone.
Is it legal for this person to take us to court? Does this person even have the right to present a small claims court for "failure to comply with terms of contract regarding payment of rent"?

Can he take you to court, of course, but that will be your first challenge, that he is not legally entitled to collect.

But I am sure that he was given that right by the owner but that is the first legal challenge to make

Followup: the Small Claims Judge ruled for the LL and we had to pay it all.