How do you make a friend or family member move out of your house

Tom: Holley, there's a text for us, go ahead and read that out loud for me, if you would.

Holley: Yes. The text is asking, "How do you make a friend or a family member move out of your house?" That member who's overstayed their welcome.

Tom: "Yes, you can stay for a couple of days," here it is six months later-

Holley: Six weeks later.

Tom: -they're still on your couch. Holley, what's kind of funny about that is, I told you how we have videos with a million views on YouTube. Guess what our number one viewed video is.

Holley: How to evict my brother.

Tom: Exactly. Family member, friend, how to get them out of my house. First of all, let's just say that there's no distinction between a family member, brother, sister, friend, and somebody who's literally a tenant that's paying to rent your house, or your apartment. Neither one of them allows for self-help. Neither one of them allows you to take their stuff and put it out on the curb, and change the locks. Even if it's your brother, sister, friend, you voluntarily let him come into your house. You're not collecting a dime worth of rent from them but you want them to go. No self-help, folks, you've got to go through the normal eviction process. That's about a six-week process. You can try and do it yourself but often people will hire an attorney to do that.

Holley: They will. They will, yes. Because you have to go through those steps. Notice is one of those steps. It's the first step. To give notice to that person, that you wish for them to move on. That's the difficult part, you have to go through the normal judicial steps for that.

Tom: Normally, when you're evicting a tenant, they live in your rental house and you don't have to see them on a day-to-day basis. Can you imagine evicting your brother, that every day you come home from work and you're in the middle of this legal action against them, trying to evict them? Might be a little bit uncomfortable.

Holley: Uncomfortable. Just nerve-wracking.

Tom: Yes. Well, hopefully, the brother gets it and voluntarily moves out. By the way, we've talked about no self-help. Really, for evicting a tenant, or even a friend, or family member, that you voluntarily let them move into your home, there's really only three ways to get them out of your house. Number one is that they walk up to hand you the keys, and say, "Bye-bye, I'm leaving." Number two, they've abandoned the property, and Florida Statutes defined what abandonment is. Number three, you go to court and you evict them.

Holley: You evict them, yes.

Tom: What's not on that list? Turning off the electric, changing the locks.

Holley: Changing the locks. Dumping their clothing outside.

Tom: Yes. Over the years, I've had landlords coming to me before and saying, "Tom, I struck a deal with the tenant," and the tenant said, "Okay, I'm moving in, within a couple of weeks I'm going to move the power over into my name. Would you mind keeping it in your name for a period of time, until I get that done?" Well, guess what, the tenant never did that. Tenant quit paying rent. The landlord says, "Tom, surely I'm not collecting rent. Surely I don't have to go pay the electric on my tenant's home." Oh yes, you do.

Holley: Yes, you do.

Tom: That's a-- boy that really bites.

Holley: It does, yes.

Tom: I'm sure that's a lesson that the landlord learned that they will never let that happen again. Folks, we have lines open for your legal questions right now, if you want to reach us at 407-916-8255. We're going to take a break. We'll be back in just a few minutes. Everybody, my name is Tom Olsen. The name of the show is Olsen on Law. You're listening to 96.9 The Game.

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