Three-Day Notice To Pay Rent Or Quit: Fill & Download for Free

I’m an attorney who frequently practices landlord/tennant law.Three things:Asking this question here will get you either questionable or flat out wrong advice. You are asking for legal help and the only person who can give that to you is a qualified attorney in your jurisdiction. Call one. Now.No one here knows your jurisdiction so the advice will be wrong. Landlord/tennant law is insanely jurisdiction-specific and the folks who will try to answer this question really, really dont know what they are talking about. See point one above.The best and only advice you should take for this is from a qualified attorney. Again, see point one above.

We don’t; in fact we usually couldn’t do that even if we wanted to, as most states require us to serve a notice to vacate before we can even proceed with a formal eviction.That notice you receive directly from the landlord is not an eviction notice. Depending on where you live it might be called something like a notice to “cure or quit”, or just to “quit”, and this is the landlord telling you what you must do to avoid having a legal case filed against you. A notice to vacate is the same as a notice to quit, and this one means that you must move out (plus empty and clean the space and return the keys) within a certain number of days, usually three or five, or you will be formally evicted. A notice to “cure or quit” gives you the additional option to pay what you owe – or fix whatever problem has led to the notice – within those days, to avoid being evicted.Some landlords do actually ask tenants to move, before they even issue their own written notices, but there’s a very good reason why a lot of us don’t. If we’ve reached a point where we’d even contemplate eviction, it means we need to get rid of those people. We could ask, but we’ll have absolutely no way of knowing whether the tenant is actually going to be gone by whatever time they agreed to. If they comply, all is well, but if they don’t, we’re right back where we started. If my tenant hadn’t paid rent on April 1st (under normal non-pandemic circumstances), I could serve them with a five day notice to vacate anytime after midnight on the 2nd. If they didn’t leave by the 6th, I could then file them paperwork with the court to have them evicted. It varies by state and municipality, but in my case they’d be served with the actual eviction notice on the following business day and given a court date within a week or so – though this can take up to two months elsewhere. Typically those tenants would be physically removed by the marshals before the 20th, and unless I eventually get paid for those days through a lawsuit, I’ll have lost 2/3 of a month’s rent.If instead I had simply asked my tenants to leave within five days, their promise to do so would be meaningless in the eyes of the law. Once I determined that they had broken their promise, I’d have to start from scratch by delivering that written notice to vacate and give them an additional five days to comply. That would mean missing out on an additional five days rent, which would be hundreds of dollars in my cheapest unit. Since my goal is to have the evicted tenants removed by the twentieth so I’ll have ten days to clean, paint, and perform repairs in order to move in someone else on the 1st, those five extra days could potentially turn into an extra 25 days, since my leases start on the 1st or 15th. Even if you think these are minor issues, remember that all it takes for a landlord to avoid wasting this time is to serve a written notice immediately.Whether you’re asking about the actual filing in court or the landlord’s own notice, the answer is the same: We don’t ask because a simple verbal agreement isn’t binding in this case, which makes it way too easy for scammers to extend the time they’ll get to live for free or continue trashing a place.

No one “suddenly” gets an eviction letter.An eviction is a court order, and so if you are evicted, you are served papers by the court.Before that happens, you are subpoenaed by the court, which means you are served papers and an order to appear. If you don’t show up to the eviction hearing — most tenants don’t — then the landlord gets a default judgement against you, and the court issues the eviction order.Before that, the landlord is required to serve notice, and then wait in excess of the notice period by some number of days — this varies by law, depending on your jurisdiction.You probably only received a “Notice To Quit”, and you’re now in the waiting period between the time the landlord has to give you notice, and the time the landlord can file with the court.Good news:The landlord hasn’t really evicted you until you’ve gone through the rest of the process.Bad news:If you let him take it through the rest of the process, you’re probably going to end up losing in court, and being evicted.Worse news:If you end up evicted, you are going to find it nearly impossible to find another place to live, unless you buy it, because no landlord will want to rent to you, with an eviction judgement on your background check.Here’s the issue…Unless you were in about one of three areas in the U.S., you probably could not legally withhold the rent, even if the landlord didn’t fix the problems.You were still required to pay rent.While legally, in some jurisdictions, you can withhold rent, you can only do so after you’ve used the money you would have used to pay rent, in order to fix the problems.You would need to check your local rental laws to know if you are in one of these areas, or you’d need to check with a landlord/tenant attorney.And even if you were, you’d have to meticulously follow the letter of the law, or potentially face an eviction.Mostly, if you can do this at all, you can only do this to fix things that violate the implied warranty of habitability.Refrigerator doesn’t work?Allowed.Dishwasher doesn’t work?Denied.Garbage disposal doesn’t work?Denied.Furnace doesn’t work?Allowed.…Etc.Can you recover by paying rent?I don’t know. It depends on the type of notice you received.A “Notice To Quit Or Correct” means “Pay up or get out”.A “Notice To Quit” means “Just get out, or I’m going to evict you”.You can try talking to a landlord/tenant attorney, and see if there’s any way to walk this back, so you don’t have to move.There probably isn’t.If you get a subpoena for an eviction hearing, definitely show up at the hearing.Even if you are already moved out, or will have moved out by the time the hearing rolls around, and think the judge will dismiss the eviction proceeding when you tell him that.Otherwise, there’ll be an eviction on you background check, and you won’t be able to rent elsewhere.And then the landlord wins his parting shot.Bottom line?You should probably move.Next time, before you withhold rent, consult a landlord/tenant attorney.P.S.: make sure you get a receipt for the keys when you return them.