reasonable belief<\/em>.\u00a0 What in the heck makes your belief that the tenant is violent \u201creasonable?\u201d\u00a0 And worse \u2013 how do you prove your belief is reasonable?<\/p>\nLet\u2019s say you hear a rumor that your tenant got into a fight.\u00a0 However, upon asking around you can find no other tenants who will confirm this rumor.\u00a0 Acting on this, alone, will likely not be deemed a reasonable concern.\u00a0 This is true even if you know, but cannot prove, the tenant may have intimidated other tenants or victims into not disclosing to you anything they may have witnessed.<\/p>\n
Some \u201cbeliefs\u201d are, of course, more obvious.\u00a0 For example, a tenant who blackens both of his girlfriend\u2019s eyes and breaks her arm would clearly inspire a reasonable belief the offending tenant might injure you or one of your employees.\u00a0 So would a tenant who stabbed a roommate.\u00a0 But it\u2019s not going to be enough to walk into court and tell the Judge that you \u201cheard about\u201d these incidents. \u00a0\u00a0You\u2019re going to have to provide some kind of evidence.<\/p>\n
So, how do you demonstrate to the Judge that you have a reasonable belief that your violent tenant might injure an employee attempting to deliver a notice to vacate?\u00a0 An affidavit might help with some Judges.\u00a0 But the problem with using an affidavit is that the new law doesn\u2019t specify that an affidavit from the landlord\u2019s representative is required.\u00a0 This implies to me that an affidavit may not do the trick.\u00a0 But using an affidavit is certainly better than providing no evidence at all.\u00a0 Some better methods of proving your beliefs about your tenant\u2019s potentially violent behavior might include obtaining police incident reports from when the police were called out to the unit.\u00a0 But the police will not always complete a police incident report.\u00a0 Another effective means of proving your reasonable belief is to produce for the Judge a copy of your problem tenant\u2019s past convictions for violent crimes.<\/p>\n
There\u2019s yet a third reason why this law sucks.\u00a0 How can you prove that you delivered the snail mail copy of your notice to vacate before 5:00pm on the same day you posted the envelope on the outside of the tenant\u2019s door?\u00a0 Sure, I\u2019m being really picky here.\u00a0 But I promise you a tenant\u2019s attorney would almost certainly attack this.\u00a0 I doubt a tenant\u2019s attorney would have much luck in front of a Justice of the Peace arguing that you failed to turn the notice to vacate in to the postal system before 5:00pm.\u00a0 But I would expect this argument to be a problem before some County Court judges.\u00a0 This is why I advise landlords using this delivery method to post the envelope on the tenant\u2019s door in the morning, and deliver the snail mail copy of the notice to vacate to your local post office\u2019s counter before noon.\u00a0 Pay for the postage using a debit card.\u00a0 The receipt will give you time-stamped proof that you delivered something on that date and at that time.\u00a0 Few Judges would be willing to accept the remote possibility it was something other than your notice to vacate.<\/p>\n
Ultimately, this is a new law.\u00a0 And until enough time has passed and enough cases have reached the Texas Courts of Appeals, leaving a notice to vacate on the outside of your tenant\u2019s door will remain a risky proposition.\u00a0 Because every case is different, there is no single method of delivering a notice to vacate that will serve as a silver bullet.<\/p>\n
Situations involving a violent tenant are tricky.\u00a0 The consequences of handling one of these situations improperly can be quite severe for a property owner.\u00a0 If you have a situation like this, give Girling Law a call today at 817 864-8228 to schedule an initial consultation.\u00a0 Not only can we help you navigate the rough waters of a case involving a violent tenant, we are experts in Texas residential eviction law.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A notice to vacate is a fairly innocuous thing. \u00a0Texas courts tend to give landlords a very wide berth when it comes to what is in a notice to vacate. \u00a0But delivering a notice to vacate is arguably the most common reason Property Managers and Apartment Community Managers receive dismissals from a Justice of the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30,31,32,37],"tags":[48,49,61,63,67],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/girlinglaw.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/284"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/girlinglaw.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/girlinglaw.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/girlinglaw.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/girlinglaw.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=284"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/girlinglaw.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/284\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/girlinglaw.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=284"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/girlinglaw.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=284"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/girlinglaw.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=284"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}