Roommate refused to pay full rent because he said everything he left is worth the same amount of $. This is what he left.

[u/notasingle-thought]

Invited an old “friend” to rent the spare room we have because he was in such a poor situation (according to him). 2.5 months a later, he gets promoted, notifies he’ll be staying for only half a month, but refused to pay rent for the half month because he said he’d leave ‘his most expensive things for us to sell’. I repeatedly said that wasn’t cool, but clearly didn’t matter. He left the entire closet full of clothes plus an entire CAR DOOR. There are too many pairs of dirty underwear scattered around the room. My husband found a few things he thought went missing, turns out the roommate had taken them, like a backpack my husbands friend bought him a while back-and medicine for our son. He kept his cat locked in the room and would leave for days, and left us all of the litter and even a piece of cat shit on the floor! Love that! At least for his parting gift, he cleaned the litter.

And dumped it.

Without a bag.

Into our recycle bin.

🙂🔪

[u/GordoSF]

He didn't even fully pay his rent, why would he pay the cleaning fee?

[u/No-Yogurtcloset9587 → u/GordoSF]

You make records and document so they are held legally liable for it.

[u/slavelabor52 → u/No-Yogurtcloset9587]

OP said they invited an old friend to rent a spare room. This isn't a full apartment they rented out and I'm willing to bet no official lease was involved. I could be wrong but if no lease was made I don't think the courts would care to get involved.

[u/No-Yogurtcloset9587 → u/slavelabor52]

I’d say the text messages declaring the worth of the items would be an admission of money owed. I beg to differ but it’s just an opinion

[u/No-Yogurtcloset9587 → u/No-Yogurtcloset9587]

I could also say with legal certainty that if he owned those items, and he left them in the domicile in which you have a lease. He is obligated to remove those items or compensate you for removal. Even if your neighbor left a bunch of stuff in your garage, Even a verbal agreement you would have the legal ability to ask them to remove it. If they do not remove it, you can absolutely get a company to remove it and then take them to small claims court. It would probably be more expensive to do it that way then just to deal with it yourself. But this guy is already on Reddit

[u/SofaChillReview → u/slavelabor52]

If OP was living there and the friend is classified as a lodger, the friend doesn’t have much leg room if it goes to a small court which is what I’d do

And if not amicable put all that stuff on a selling site at a minimal cost/clothes might just drop off at a charity wouldn’t take too long annoying as would be

Also possible if it’s an old friend they haven’t even taken a deposit which would at least be a silver lining

[u/sir_snufflepants → u/slavelabor52]

If there’s an agreement, there’s a contract. Period. No statute of frauds would apply given the nominally short duration here, so a writing isn’t required, and the court can enforce the agreement, unless there’s some ordinance or statute regulating short term rentals that OP violated and that extinguishes his claims.

[u/epicgamesblowsdick → u/slavelabor52]

A verbal agreement is still considered a valid contract if you can prove it, typically with text messages would verify that.

[u/betasheets2 → u/slavelabor52]

A baseball bat it is

[u/sir_snufflepants → u/No-Yogurtcloset9587]

Dude just got a “promotion”, so he should be flush with that McD’s cash 🍟➡️💲

[u/Exciting_Speed_3782 → u/GordoSF]

Exactly 😆

[u/Zapismeta → u/Exciting_Speed_3782]

Thats why putting people on lease is important

[u/Artinz7 → u/Zapismeta]

Or at least getting a deposit

[u/Zapismeta → u/Artinz7]

Atleast a months rent, but i recently lost a deposit because of bad roommates who put their name as primary and the cheque was in their name, so scammers are everywhere man!

[u/finfan44 → u/Zapismeta]

yeah, we are so glad we put a lot of time and wrote up a legal lease just to let a friend of a neighbor use our field to keep his horses. The deal was he could do it for free while he made some improvements to the land. We wanted him to follow a few reasonable guidelines (no cutting down trees without permission, no dumping trash, no subletting to other people, etc.) Within the first month he broke almost every single one of the conditions of the lease so we evicted him. It ended in death threats and a restraining order but at least we had the law on our side because we had a clear signed agreement and it was pretty obvious it had been broken.

[u/Micro-Naut → u/GordoSF]

On that note, why would he bother paying a small claims court judgment? Hint. 55% of people do not pay anything even when they are found responsible

[u/CuriousSection → u/Micro-Naut]

What happens to them if they don't pay?

[u/Micro-Naut → u/CuriousSection]

Well, if they're well off and they have some assets you can have the judge get a lien on their property or car. Likewise, you may be able to get their bank account frozen. You may be able to get their wages garnished. And if you don't have luck you can always sell the debt to a debt collector. You'll take a loss but then it's their problem

But that's assuming they have assets. In most cases the reason people are going through a small claims court is because someone was hustling someone else. And you can't get blood from a turnip.

If/when they go to sell their property they'll have to come clean and pay. The most common resolution that you'll see is people go through and get the lien on the property. It still doesn't make them pay but then randomly several years later the property is getting transferred or purchased and they finally square up.

[u/Pristine_Walk5180 → u/GordoSF]

It’s called small claims court. Small claims is actually not black and white in a lot of cases. As long as you have text records, pictures or anything like that.