Landlord stuck with paying the utilities for the tenant

Attorney Tom Olsen: Chris, it reminds me of back in the day I had a client that had a rental property. The tenant came to her and said, "Hey, I'm going to put the electric in my name, but hey, it's going to take me a couple of weeks. Would you mind leaving the electric in your name until I go down to the power company and put it in my name?" My client said, "Yes, I'll do that for you." Well, you can imagine what happened. The tenant quit paying rent. The tenant never put the electric into the tenant's name. The client came to me outraged and said, "Oh my God, I got a tenant that's not only paying rent, but I'm paying the electric bill for the tenant. Can I turn the electric off?"

Attorney Chris Merrill: No.

Tom: I had to give her the bad news. No, you can't. She learned an expensive lesson about that. The point is that once you get a tenant in there, there's no self-help. You cannot change the locks or turn off the electric if you're paying for it, or other things. You got to go through a court order to evict somebody.

Chris: Very specific in the Florida Statutes, as to what procedures and the right way legally, to evict somebody. You're correct, Tom, many times people are not understanding and they will try self-help, and then that will make it worse for them. Unfortunately, in your client's situation too, it even went further where they most of the time-- of course, you always want to make sure that the utilities and all of those cable, everything is in the tenant name, and in this situation, it was even worse for the landlord because that was in their name.

Tom: Well, first off, if you're in a circuit court case, the clerks are never going to give you the forms, they're never going to help you. In the county court, sometimes they will give you the forms and help you through the process. The good news is, as far as residential eviction is concerned, if you're the owner of the property, the county court clerks will give you the forms to handle your own eviction. That's not going to make it easy necessarily, but in theory, is something you can do without a lawyer.

[00:02:07] [END OF AUDIO]