How to evict a friend or family member who is not technically a tenant

 

Attorney Tom Olsen: Hey Rob, you know, I’ve got a client that - she lives in Chicago – and her brother lived here in Orlando and the brother had a roommate, not paying rent necessarily. The brother passed away, my Chicago client inherits the house and now she wants brother’s roommate out, although he’s never paid rent, they were just friends. So I know that that’s a – how do you evict someone that’s not technically a tenant?

Attorney Rob Solomon: Right. So this is kind of a specialty area of the law that, at least, I’ve gotten used to doing, sort of a “uncle eviction”, so “family eviction”, people you let in but they never really were tenant-type evictions. And there is an area of Law, but it’s called “illegal detainer actions”, which very much parallels landlord-tenant law, but what it is about are not tenants but people who enter the premises legally, with consent, and now that consent has been withdrawn and they’re not leaving. And there are procedures that are comparable to landlord-tenant law. I’d have to say that sometimes it requires even educating the judges a little bit, it’s an obscure area of the Law, but it’s definitely an existent area of the Law, so there are remedies involve, you have to know how to go about it and there’s a way to solve this problem.

Attorney Tom Olsen: And if she were here in Orlando -- some of the remedy for her involved putting notices on the door. Well she’s not even here in Orlando so, in this case, she’s got to pay you to pay somebody else to go put notices on the door.

Attorney Rob Solomon: Well, we do that, that’s part of what you get. We arrange for notices and services by a process over all of that as well.

Attorney Tom Olsen: Hey folks, remember that we have lawyers in my office right now standing by to talk to you at (407) 423-5561. Attorney Colonel Airth is there, he does debt collection, protection of debt collectors, mortgage foreclosures; Jim Monroe, bankruptcy attorney; Paul Newnum, family law divorce attorney. They’re all at my office right now standing by to talk to you at (407) 423-5561. My name is Tom Olsen, the name of the show is Olsen on Law, you’re listening to News 96.5.