RV Park, RV Campground, and RV Resort owners have unique issues when dealing with a problematic RV site occupant. First is making the very difficult determination as to whether the RV site occupant is a licensee or a tenant. Even if you believe you have correctly made this determination, you may run into the issue of your local police or Sheriff’s Department disagreeing with you. Should you find you need to start the eviction process, you then must navigate the special issues RV Park, RV Campground, and RV Resort owners face with providing your problem occupant the correct notice to vacate and delivering that notice in a way that complies with Texas law. Afterall, notice delivery issues are the number one reason Texas Judges dismiss evictions.
Hiring a local attorney to handle your eviction can be quite expensive. However, this is nowhere near as expensive as starting the eviction process and getting it wrong! Girling Law avails to RV Park, RV Campground, and RV Resort owners an opportunity to share the eviction workload. This enables our firm to discount our eviction service while enabling you to enjoy high-quality attorney representation.
If you have questions about a problem RV site occupant, please give us a call at (469) 423-6828
Is Your Occupant a Licensee or a Tenant?
When faced with a problem occupant, the first question the owner of an RV Park, RV Resort, or RV Campground must address is whether the occupant is a licensee or a tenant. Unfortunately, the answer to this question is complex.
An RV licensee pays for temporary use of an RV site / hook-up and other amenities. An RV tenant on the other hand enjoys temporary possession of these items. This is a very subtle distinction. Another way to describe this difference is the RV licensee is borrowing the site where the RV tenant is renting it.
Three different characteristics can affect how your RV site occupant’s licensee / tenant legal status. First, is whether you and your team are calling the RV site occupant a “guest.” This will move the needle more towards into the “licensee” territory. But this verbal “guest” designation is the weakest of these three items. Second is having a site agreement that clearly establishes that your RV site occupant is a licensee, and not a guest. This is arguably the strongest of the three characteristics. Third is your RV site occupant’s frequency of payment. The more payment intervals your RV site occupant has made, the more likely the occupant will be deemed to be a tenant.
This is where things can get even more murky. With the current state of our laws in Texas, a RV site occupant is more likely to be deemed a tenant after they have made six weekly payments than after they have made two monthly payments. Imagine that! The RV site occupant can actually remain at the site longer but still be deemed a licensee because he only made two payments!!
So, naturally, RV Park, RV Resort, and RV Campground owners should use month-to-month site agreements for longer-term RV site occupants, right? Nope. Some Judges will deem a month-to-month agreement as automatically creating a landlord-tenant relationship.
A lot of this depends on the Judge.
What it comes down to is that, because Texas law is presently so unclear, you really have no way of knowing what your local law enforcement officers and Judges will do when presented with this licensee / tenant question.
RV Park, RV Resort, and RV Campground owners are sometimes surprised and outraged that the black-and-white terms in the RV site agreement establishing the occupant’s status as a licensee can be disregarded. But this is an unfortunate reality for all of us. If a Judge deems our actions and those of our RV site occupant’s as being that of a landlord-tenant relationship, the Judge may disregard the licensee wording in our contract.
This murky distinction between licensees and tenants is complicated by the fact that the process to remove a problem RV licensee is very different than the process of removing a problem RV tenant. RV Park, RV Resort, and RV Campground owners may use self help procedures or ask the local police or Sheriff’s Department to arrest the licensee for criminal trespass. For tenants, however, owners must use the Texas eviction process.
So how can we say for sure an RV site occupant is an RV licensee or an RV tenant? The short answer is that we can’t. Worse, even when the answer to this question appears quite obvious, your local police department, sheriff’s department, or judges may have a good-faith disagreement with you about the occupant’s status. Alternatively, they may be completely ignorant of these rules and they can make an uninformed decision that makes your life problematic for the next several months.
Do you need help understanding if your RV site occupant is a licensee or a tenant? Please give us a call at (469) 423-6828
The Enforcement Problem – Challenges with Your Local Police Department or Sheriff’s Department
You may have heard of the “Innkeeper’s Rule.” This is the legal rule that typically gives hotel owners the right to remove a non-paying guest’s possessions and lock them out of the hotel room. This type of self-help is normally not allowed under Texas law. The Innkeeper’s Rule is the exception. When a guest remains in the hotel room, the hotel may contact their local law enforcement to request the guest be removed by force and arrested for criminal trespass, if they do not leave voluntarily. This Innkeeper’s Rule applies to RV site licensees.
But from a Police Officer’s perspective, your request to have an RV site occupant removed can quickly become problematic. If your RV site occupant has been on premises for more than a couple of weeks, you may find your local police department of sheriff’s department refusing to remove the occupant. County law enforcement officers are not trained to adjudicate legal issues, Judges are. Because these laws are so unclear, we can put a law enforcement officer in a difficult position by requesting the removal of an RV site occupant who has been on site for a substantial amount of time.
Often, you will find your local police department or Sheriff’s department default response will be to refuse to act unless it is perfectly clear that your RV site occupant is a licensee.
Has local law enforcement refused to remove your problem RV site occupant? Please give us a call at (469) 423-6828
How Girling Law is Customized to Serve Texas RV Park, RV Campground, and RV Resort Owners’ Eviction Needs
Signing up and getting set up for representation with Girling Law is easy and cost free. Our firm’s legal services are tailored to ensure our legal services remain affordable for your business. Best of all, Girling Law will help you manage your legal expenses by partnering with both you and a local attorney to ensure you can enjoy high-quality legal representation without the sting of big firm prices.
No Cost or Obligation to Sign Up for Girling Law’s RV Park, RV Campground, and RV Resort Eviction Services
Signing up to enjoy the option of future representation with Girling Law couldn’t be easier!
The process takes you only minutes of your time. We will provide you a client agreement that requires payments only after you submit a request for representation on a specific case. There are no regular retainer payments or set up fees. You pay only when the need to evict arises. There is also nothing in our client agreements that prevents you from hiring another law firm.
After you sign up, our team will create a landing page for you that you will use for submitting your future eviction orders. We bill RV Park, RV Campground, and RV Resort clients using a stepped flat fee system. No more paying an attorney one flat fee for full representation only to get burned by having your tenant move out days later! With our stepped flat fees, you pay only for the steps in the eviction process we complete or start.
Our clients’ favorite part is our Net 30 payment terms! We will bill you for representation AFTER the completion of your case. That could occur after your tenant moves out on their own or after we have the Constables forcibly remove them. Once the final step in your eviction case occurs, we will issue the invoice to you, and you will have 30 days to pay.
If you would like us to send you a free, no obligation client agreement, please give us a call at
(469) 423-6828
Legal Services Designed for RV Park Owners
Texas has strictly enforced laws relating to how notices to vacate are to be delivered to tenants. This strict enforcement creates significate problems in RV Park, RV Campground, and RV Resort evictions.
Given the rates RV site occupants pay our clients, we understand RV Park, RV Campground, and RV Resort owners do not have the luxury of shelling out thousands of dollars for legal representation. To strike a balance and create value for our RV Park, RV Campground, and RV Resort clients, we will help you reduce the costs of legal representation by enlisting your help in the eviction process. Shortly after signing up for representation through our firm, we will provide you with documents and video-based training to help you understand exactly what your role is in the eviction process and how to perform that role. Additionally, our team will review the evidence you have generated and work with you to make corrections, if needed.
These cost-saving steps coupled with our special RV Park, RV Campground, and RV Resort eviction procedures mean you enjoy reduced legal fees. More importantly, many RV Park, RV Campground, and RV Resort in more remote communities can enjoy eviction legal services from our firm where local attorneys may not be willing or able to offer a full scope of eviction representation services.
Do you have questions about the eviction services our firm offers? Please give us a call at
(469) 423-6828
State-Wide Eviction Representation for RV Park, RV Campground, and RV Resort Owners
You are probably wondering how in the world a law firm located in north Texas can effectively represent an RV Park, RV Campground, or RV Resort located nine or ten hours away and do it for such a low cost!
We have structured the legal services we provide to RV Park, RV Campground, and RV Resort owners in such a way that we do all of the heavy lifting before your eviction trial. We put a lot of time and energy into setting up the trial to be the least complicated part of the eviction process.
With evictions, the trial can be the easiest part of the process. It just takes some extra work to make that happen. This is the strategy we will take with your eviction. We will submit to your local Justice of the Peace or County Court at Law (if you are facing an appeal) a very thorough set of pleadings. We will include with your pleadings most of the documentary evidence needed at trial. By the time we show up for trial, the appearing attorney is simply handing documents to the Judge. The pleadings we file with the court do nearly everything that is needed to make the case for the removal of your tenant.
We do not make one of our staff attorneys drive ten hours to attend your Justice of the Peace trial! Instead, because our pre-trial preparation process has made the trial process so uncomplicated, this enables us to hire a local attorney to present your case to the Judge.
We are happy to offer RV Park, RV Campground, and RV Resort Owners free consultations. Please give us a call at (469) 423-6828