Day Notice To Pay Rent Or Quit Form California: Fill & Download for Free

This answer is based on California law.You should fill out and serve the “Three-Day Notice to Pay Rent or Quit” (vacate) form, carefully following instructions from a reputable website, such as Nolo Press (Legal Encyclopedia, Legal Forms, Books, & Software) or your local Court website. If the payment demanded hasn’t been received by the deadline, file an unlawful detainer action to get possession of the premises, back rent up to the day the 3-day Notice expired, and monetary damages for any occupancy after that. You probably shouldn’t attempt to do this without an attorney, unless you are up to the challenge of learning a new and complicated procedure of this nature.Given that the first step in the process is serving the 3-Day Notice, at which point you probably won’t have yet hired an attorney, it’s important to get it, well, exactly right. Make sure you check out the details online. In particular, your calculation of the rent owed must not exceed the correct amount, even by a penny. Otherwise, the entire case could be thrown out at trial, costing you precious time. If there are significant maintenance issues with the unit, you would be well advised to look into them before filing the action. Some judges are inclined to give the tenant a bit of leeway if there are legitimate habitability issues.Hunker down. All this will take time. It wouldn’t be all that unusual for it to take at least a couple of months to get them out. The sheriff who is assigned to your local court will perform the eviction; don’t try any funny stuff yourself. If you do, the Court will take offense and punish you severely. The municipal police don’t participate in the eviction unless it’s connected to another criminal matter.Once the unit has officially been returned to you, then you may re-tenant it and try to collect on your judgment against the tenant. When the Sheriff performs the lockout, they will set an appointment; do NOT under any circumstances miss this date and time. If you do, they will have to re-schedule. You or your authorized representative must be present during the lockout, and you should be prepared to change the locks at that time, unless the tenant needs a little time to retrieve his furniture. However, if you have any doubts as to his dependability, it’s probably best to change the locks and then have the tenant make an appointment with you to provide access when he’s ready to remove his belongings.If the tenant is running into troubles in moving his furniture and/or belongings, you can bring to his attention inexpensive moving services, including storage facilities that will leave a “pod” at the premises to be loaded up, then hitched up and taken to the facility. If it’s cheap enough, you might even offer to pay one month’s rent, but make sure the rental is in the tenant’s name.If the tenant abandons the unit while the UD is in progress, you may re-take the unit and continue with the action, which will then be limited to monetary recovery. If there is abandoned property left behind, make sure to handle it according to the applicable statutes, which may require you to give notice and/or store or even attempt to sell the items. Proceeds can technically only be applied to allowable storage charges, not rent owing. (Strange, isn’t it?) Most tenants don’t leave behind anything of significant value; if the total is less than a statutory amount, you can essentially trash it or pick what you want.You will still have to account for the security deposit, but you can apply it to any unsatisfied rent still owing, as well as cleaning and damage to the unit, as outlined in statute. Follow the refund rules carefully, as the Court is a bit touchy about that as well, particularly, the 21-day deadline for mailing the refund. If you don’t know where your tenant is, you must mail the refund, along with the required statement of deductions, to their last known address, which is often the address of the unit. If it doesn’t come back unforwardable, it could be a lead for their new whereabouts. If all of the deposit has been absorbed by allowable deductions, and there’s still a remaining balance owing, you may want to pursue collection against the tenant, perhaps using a collection agency.I should also add the following advice. In order to document any abandoned property or to justify any charges for cleaning or repair, it’s a wise policy to take photographs to support your claims. Also, at each step of the way, you should have reliable information to consult; there are many details involved that can trip you up. This Quora answer is intended to be a summary only.If it should somehow happen that the tenant pays the sum demanded in the 3-Day Notice by its deadline, your cause of action is extinguished, unless you have included in your filing another reason to evict other than the overdue rent demanded (but in that case you should have used a different notice or notices, such as Notice to Perform Covenant). If they end up legally staying on, however, you would probably want to give them a 30-Day or 60-Day Notice to Quit (according to statute), since you may not want to go through all that stress again.

I have a couple of houses I rent in California and Nevada, houses I bought for my residence and decided to rent instead of selling when I relocated. I have had it take six months to get one particularly resourceful criminal out of my house. This particular criminal - let’s call her “Trish” - because that is her name - had been living in the house with her boyfriend, but they broke up and he was moving on, and she asked if she could rent the house in his stead. He had been renting from me for five years, and had been a great tenant, so I didn’t imagine it would be a problem… she had been living there with him for a couple of years, off and on.So she already had possession of the house when we met at the house, filled in the lease agreement, and everyone signed it. It was the middle of the month, and the rent was paid to the end of the month by my previous tenant, so she said she’d mail a check to reach us by the first and we left it at that.The first month’s rent - which was to include a deposit - bounced, and I couldn’t reach Trish… she didn’t respond to my phone calls or email. After nearly three weeks she called and apologized and said she had been traveling, but she’d include all three checks in her next month’s payment. The second month she claimed she had sent the check for both months and the deposit “a few days ago… just give it a week and if it’s not there I’ll cancel the checks and send new ones.” Long story short - we never received even one payment from her.Sooooo - she’d been in the house for two weeks on her ex’s dime, then for a month and a half on mine - and now it was nearly Christmas and I was in New York for the holidays - clear across the country. By the time I got home she had been living on my dime for well over two months, and her excuses - and my patience - had run thin. I don’t make money on my rentals - I just use the rent money to pay the mortgage - so this wasn’t working for me.I live in the Bay Area - 4.5 hours (with traffic) from the rental, so I hired a local paralegal to fill out and post a three-day notice to pay rent or quit… then waited three days. The same paralegal then got the earliest court date - three weeks out. And the paralegal - who was great - served Trish.On Court Day Number One, I drove the 4.5 hours to get to court and was sent to mediation. After several hours of back and forth in two separate rooms, the mediator told us there was no way to settle the case. She claimed to the mediator that I owed her $10,000 for work she had done to the house, and she felt the house now should belong to her, and she shouldn’t have to pay rent. We went into the courtroom and the mediator told the judge he would have to hear the case… but now, of course, it’s nearly quitting time, so the judge gave us a new court date.Court Date Number Two - two weeks later. And another nine hours (round trip) of driving. When our case was called, Trish claimed she had worked on the property and had spent $10,000 on my house, cleaning, fixing things, painting - basically doing work that she was not authorized to do. This was particularly ironic, since she had been living in the house for several months with her boyfriend before he moved out, so any “clean up” work she did was just cleaning up after herself and her live-in. The judge asked her for receipts, but she “didn’t bring them to court.” The judge told her to bring her receipts the next time and set a new hearing for two weeks out.Court Date Number Three: At the next hearing there was a new judge. The tenant called the court and said she was unable to attend as her son was ill. The judge canceled the hearing and set another hearing for the next week. My husband and I drove back home. Another day out of work, another day in the car in traffic between Chico, CA and the Bay Area.Court Date Number Four: The next week the original judge is back. When he asked Trish for her receipts she pulled out a paper grocery bag full of what appeared to be trash and dumped it out on the table. My husband picked up one receipt - it’s for a kid’s meal at McDonalds. She claimed the meal receipts were for her paying friends who worked on the house with food - to save me money! The judge told her she had to 1) type up her receipts and 2) Get them to me a minimum of 24 hours before the next hearing. He set another trial date, three weeks out, as the court was backlogged.It was now nearly three months since I posted the three-days notice on her door, and she’s been living rent-free in my house for nearly six months . . . I have taken the day off work and driven nine hours to court and back four times. And we haven’t even begun to have an entire hearing.Court Date Number Five: At the next hearing we are to begin at 1 PM, after lunch. Whew! A much better leaving time for that 4.5 hour drive! We were there early, but Trish was nowhere to be seen. The judge called roll and after finishing with the roll call tells us our case will not be heard that day, as Trish had called in that morning with the same excuse - her son was sick. He set another hearing for the next week at 10 AM. That means I’ll have to leave home around 5 AM to guarantee I’ll be there in time for the hearing.Court Date Number Six: At the next hearing my husband (what a trooper!) and I were there at 9:30 - no Trish. I still have not received any receipts nor list of receipts from her, despite the judge ordering her to provide them. The judge called roll, and she was not there. He told us Trish had called the courthouse again to say her son was sick and she had to pick him up from school, and asked if I would agree to postpone the hearing to another day. He said she would find a sitter and come in the afternoon if the hearing couldn’t be postponed.I explained that this was the sixth time I’d driven 4.5 hours to come to court, and that she had never paid ANY rent at all, ever, as her first rent check had bounced, along with her deposit.The judge said he understood, and he would postpone the hearing until 4 PM, at which time he would hear the case whether she was there or not. My husband took me for a leisurely lunch, then we came back to court.She was a no-show, so the judge heard my side of the story and then rendered a judgment of around $11K in my favor for back rent and damages. When we got out of court it was 4:45 PM, so we were pressed to try to get through the line at the clerk’s window so we could avoid having to make that drive again to get the paperwork filed for the judge’s signature.While we stood in line at the clerk’s window, who should appear but Trish! Dressed to the nines, like a lawyer, ahead of us in line for another clerk. She was pretending to be an attorney who had come by to pick up the judgment for her “client.”My husband ran back to the courtroom and told the Bailiff she was at the courthouse at the clerk’s window. The bailiff went into chambers and told the judge. The judge was so irritated he stayed late to sign our judgment that day so we could move forward without waiting the several days it generally takes to get the paperwork filed and the judgment signed.Although we got the judgement that same day (Thursday was eviction-hearings-day at that particular courthouse), we could not have her evicted until the Wednesday two full weeks after the judgment was issued - which really meant one day shy of three weeks. That was 1) to give her time to file an appeal if she was going to, and 2) Evictions only happen on Wednesday. So you see, even by the choosing of days to hear evictions and days to serve evictions, landlords are at a disadvantage in California, adding nearly another month to the half a year of free rent she had already stolen.We hired the local sheriff to serve the eviction notice, and she had, if memory serves, 48 hours once the notice was served before the sheriff came back to actually evict her. It was literally MONTHS after the first three-day notice to quit was tacked to the front door.At 11 PM the night before she was to be evicted she called me, crying, begging to be given another two weeks so she could have time to move all her stuff out. “What will my children do without their toys?!”Of course, this was just a ploy to start the clock all over again. I refused, and advised her to gather anything important to her and her children that night, as the Sheriff had told us he would be there first thing the next day to evict her, forcibly if need be.And the plot thickens. My husband showed up at 9 AM to be there when the Sheriff arrived. She had packed NOTHING, but left with a friend and her purse. She called me later that day and asked when she could come back to pack up and move the entire 3-bedroom house of her belongings. My husband agreed to drive the 9 hours once again, and meet her the following Saturday at 9 AM. I told her he would be there from 9 AM to 8 PM and advised that she have some help to move, since she had a lot of heavy furniture, large screen TVs, etc., and NOTHING had been packed… the house was full.When he showed up that Saturday - having left the house at 4:30 AM to arrive by 9 - she was a no-show. The driveway was gated with a heavy metal gate, which the Sheriff had locked, so we knew she hadn’t been there to get her things, and the house was still full. My hubby started packing the small things up, to move to storage, and was there until noon, when he went to get something for lunch. Trish called while he was at lunch and said she was at the house - where was he? He left his lunch and drove back to the house, but - again - she wasn’t there. He texted her to say he would stay until 5 PM, and then he was going back home, after hiring a moving company to move her things to storage. He informed her if that happened she would have to pay for the mover and the storage to get her belongings back. Then he started looking online for a local moving and storage place.Then around 1 PM it got really crazy. . . a woman - the “friend” who had been with her when the sheriff came to evict Trish - came to the house and asked if she could get HER things. My husband said sure, and she went in with a suitcase and packed up some clothes and makeup. He went in the house with her to make sure she didn’t take Trish’s things - which we were responsible for at that point.While packing she told him Trish had hired her as a nanny. Trish had promised her $1,400/month in pay and free room and board just two weeks prior. The poor woman had quit her job and vacated the room she had been renting, and was now out of work and homeless. Trish had completely fooled her, ruined her life, and boy was she mad.She pulled some papers out of a pile in the kitchen and handed them to my hubby. They were the rental papers for all the furniture, the two 70″ TVs, and the computer in the kitchen. Trish had scammed the rental company and never made a payment. They had been trying to repossess their furniture and electronics for months, but she kept the gate at the top of the driveway locked so they couldn’t get in.My husband called them, explained the situation, and they were there within 15 minutes… in a huge truck, with two big guys up front. They backed up to the house and had all the furniture/etc… in the truck in about a half an hour. They were just that good.At 2 PM, just as they were finishing up - guess who pulled into the driveway! Yep! It was Trish - in a little BMW (which we later discovered had been “borrowed” from a repair shop by a repairman she was dating. The car had been brought in for servicing, and she had talked the guy into letting her drive it, “until the owner came to pick it up.” The repairman was fired and arrested for auto theft. But I digress (truth - stranger than fiction…).Trish was apoplectic. Her “nanny” was equally furious. The two women started screaming at each other, then Trish started screaming at my husband - how dare he give HER belongings away!You might notice this was a pattern for her - she had told the mediator and the judge the house should be hers because she cared about it more than I did - And then one of the guys in the truck called the police, because, hey! this wasn’t Jerry Springer enough already!The cops knew exactly who she was, as she had had not one but TWO bench warrants out for her arrest, since she hadn’t shown up for a DUI hearing on two occasions after being released on her own recognizance at her first hearing.The police parked in the opening in the gate so no car could pull out. When she saw them she went running back inside the house and locked the door. My husband gave one of the policeman the key and they went in and brought her out in cuffs … put her in their patrol car, and off to the pokey she went, hi ho, hi ho.Leaving us with a house full of clothing, toys, a lot of legal paperwork, a fridge full of food, and a lot of garbage.The cops promised to bring her back to get her car when she was released, so my husband gave them the combination to the lock on the gate so they could let her in and get “her” car out. Sadly, when she got out a couple of days later they couldn’t drive her back to get the (stolen) car, because her license had been suspended. So she came back on her own and broke the expensive heavy metal gate by prying at it with a crowbar until the hinges broke off. If only the rental company had thought of that!Once she was booked and made bail, and she had broken our gate to pick up the stolen Beemer, she disappeared. Her kids had been given back to their fathers while she was in jail, and we’ve been unable to find her since. We have a judgment of around 12K now - with interest - but it’s not collectible. There is still a bench warrant out for her arrest. She abandoned her belongings and we disposed of them a couple of months later after putting the requisite ads in the local paper. The only thing of value left in the house had been a generator, but someone contacted us to get it back, as it turned out she had stolen it, too.She had painted several rooms in my house BLACK, so I had to pay someone to repaint. And a welder to fix the gate - not as good as new, but it was functional.And the kicker? I found out about a month later that she had put a mechanic’s lien on my house for 10K! I had to have a lawyer deal with that.I know landlords are pretty universally despised, but I’ve never taken advantage of any renter. Although I’ve been taken advantage of more than once.And the house? My first, my favorite, and the one I thought I would retire to? It burned down in the Paradise Camp Wildfire in November 2018, less than a year after getting rid of Trish. The town is pretty much gone. The water is poisoned, and there is no electricity, so there will probably be no rebuilding it within my lifetime.But - look at the bright side! I guess I won’t have any more renter problems . . .My kitchen, after remodeling, shortly before Trish moved in. . .My son - a self-proclaimed “Balloonatic” - in our garden behind the creek. The cat - a wandering wild cat tamed by my son when it was a kitten - was taken in by an elderly neighbor. I never knew her name, but we used to pick apricots for her every summer for years, and we would visit her - and our cat - every month or so, just to keep company. I’ve been unable to locate her since the fire, and have no idea if she (or our cat) made it out or not. I try not to think about that.What was left of my house when allowed to come back to the property a couple of months after the Paradise Camp Fire. Look at the dead tree forming a “V” just above the two burnt-out center cars… The above photo of my young son was taken just behind that tree.

Absolutely the fastest?This assumes the tenant acts on the orders immediately, and the landlord times things exactly, and the process server is already set up to show up on time, and make two deliveries in a single day.8 business days, assuming no correction of the failure to pay rent is allowed.This might be the case if there were previous delinquencies on the rent, or if the landlord just wants the tenant out, and the failure to pay rent was the last straw.Delivery of a 3 day notice to quit is made on Thursday, which means the tenant has until the end of day Sunday to quit (leave) on their own.That’s one business day, and two weekend days. Weekends, so long as they are not holiday weekends, can be included in the notice period in California.Sunrise Monday morning, the landlord files for the eviction (“unlawful detainer”) at a Superior Court in the jurisdiction in question, and brings along their process server, who obtains a notice of service form for the court, and the court documents.The process server goes and serves the notice to the tenant the same day, and returns to the court with the notice of service affidavit, and files it with the court clerk, which sets a trial for the next Tuesday, which is a common day for eviction proceedings.The tenant gets the papers, including the subpoena — an order to appear — later the same day.The following Tuesday, the eviction hearing is held — the 8th business day.The tenant does not contest the court action (they are a no-show), or does not successfully contest the action (they show up, but fail to make a persuasive argument).The court grants the eviction.The court issues a court order requiring the tenant vacate the premises within 3 business days.The tenant leaves immediately.Things under the landlord’s control which can delay the eviction on the landlord’s part:Early service of the 3 day notice to quit, so that the filing of the eviction proceeding happens later than 3 days; common if the service is Tuesday or Wednesday, since that gives an extra two days of weekend before the proceedings can be filedLate service of the 3 day notice to quit; a service on Friday, Saturday, or Sunday includes the next Monday, Tuesday, or Wednesday this gives an extra two days over the weekend following, since they are not business daysDelay in process service after the filingTuesday is a common eviction hearing day” in California, which means you might delay another 6 days until the following Tuesday, if the 5 day period the court usually enforces ends on any business day other than MondayFiling around holidays observed by the court, which are not considered business daysFailure of the process server to file their affidavit of service the same dayFailure to file an eviction action as soon as permitted by law; this causes a day-for-day slipAdditionally, things the tenant might do:Pay the rent:If the landlord is a moron, then they accept electronic payment, with no ability to refuse payment; and acceptance of rent resets the eviction clockThe landlord cashes the check because of poor accounting practices, and resets the eviction clockThe tenant contests the eviction successfully in courtThe tenant takes the entire 3 days and does not follow the court order to quit (the eviction), this can drag things out 4–10 daysThe landlord has to schedule with the Sheriff’s department to send people to assist and observe the evictionThe landlord has to hire people to remove the tenants possessions to the curb (it’s the tenant’s problem, if they are lost or stolen after that (If you have a pickup truck, Home Depot parking lot at 5–6AM works)The landlord has to hire a locksmith to change the locks immediately after the removal of the tenant’s propertySo if the landlord hits all the marks, 8 business days; if the tenant is difficult about things, and the landlord is not diligent, then up to a month, plus the delayed filing day-for-day slip, whatever that works out as.If the tenant wins in court during the eviction hearing… indefinitely.