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Landlord Can't Evict Accused Child Molester

Landlord Can't Evict Accused Child Molester

by Steven Williams

Q: I have a tenant who was recently arrested for sexually abusing children in the neighborhood.

While the tenant has denied the charges, many other tenants have insisted that I evict the tenant.

What can I do?

A: Most leases do not address these situations.

 

While many leases provide for an eviction when a tenant violates the law, landlords are usually unable to prove that the tenant actually broke the law.

Unless a tenant is convicted or pleads guilty, or you have an eyewitness who is willing to testify that the crime occurred, you will likely not be able to prove the tenant violated law.

Of course, in most cases, you will have no witnesses willing to testify, and your other tenants will not want to wait for the adjudication of the criminal charges. In most cases, you can do little more than inform your tenants that you are unable to evict the tenant.

You can anticipate these situations, though, and plan for them. If you plan properly, you can be successful in evicting tenants who have been charged with crimes. In order to be successful, your lease must list an arrest as an event of default. You should specify which crimes fall into this category since most judges will not evict a tenant for low grade offenses.

To increase your odds of success, I suggest this provision:

“Tenant will be in default if Tenant or any occupant of the Property is arrested of, is convicted of, pleads guilty to, pleads no contest to, or is given deferred adjudication for: a) any felony offense; or b) any misdemeanor or other offense involving actual or potential physical harm to any person, or involving possession, use, manufacture, sale or delivery of illegal drugs, controlled substances, or drug paraphernalia.”

It is important to note, however, that some jurisdictions’ laws make it illegal to evict a victim of domestic violence simply because of the occurrence of violence on the premises. In these jurisdictions, landlords who wish to utilize the lease provision suggested above must be cognizant of the fact that they may not be able to enforce it in the case of a domestic violence situation.

 

Steven Williams is a partner at the law firm of  Cohen Seglias Pallas Greenhall & Furman PC. He concentrates his practice in the areas of commercial and civil litigation, real estate, landlord and tenant law, employment law, business and corporate law, and construction law. He can be contacted at: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

 

American Apartment Owners Association offers discounts on products and services for landlords related to your commercial housing investment, including real estate forms, tenant debt collection, tenant background checks, insurance and financing.  Find out more.

 

 

 
This comment was minimized by the moderator on the site

Better tenant screening might be useful in screening out many of these sorts. Ensuring that your screening firm is a long-standing firm with good ratings at the Better Business Bureau is important. Having someone familiar with screening within you organization who can speak to the screening firm and verify that the methodology used for such screenings is sound, can be vital to catching past histories of behavior like this. Most of these people don't do this once, but have been caught doing this elsewhere and can be filtered out of the applicant pool.
Also, be careful about the "arrest" provision in the clause suggested by the blogger; the legal definition of arrest can vary depending on the jurisdiction, and a person arrested is not the same as a conviction. Innocent people get arrested too and this could be the basis for a wrongful termination of tenancy claim down the road.

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