How do you make a family member move out of your house using an unlawful detainer action in Florida?

Attorney Tom Olsen: How do you evict your brother, your sister, or your son? How do you kick a relation out of your home? They're not necessarily a tenant, and so that's the unlawful detainer. Tell the listeners about that.

Attorney Caleb Maggio: Right. Unlawful detainer is for those specific situations where there is no lease agreement. Like Tom was saying, this is your brother, your cousin, your friend, your girlfriend, and something's happened. You want them out of the house. It's a property only you have title to. This person that you want out doesn't have title to the property. What do you do? It's not an eviction. A lot of people get confused. They think it's an eviction. It's actually called an unlawful detainer, and it's very similar to an eviction, except you're doing it with no lease agreement. There's really two ways you can go about this, Tom. One way is you can file a complaint for unlawful detainer, and you get the same quick summary procedure an eviction gives you. You get that five-day notice. You go through the steps. Ultimately, this is going to end up going to trial, typically, or you're going to have to go in front of a judge at some point. There's not many easy defaults for these cases. The only other alternative is if the person that you want out has not really established this as a long-time permanent residence. You can do an affidavit as the owner saying that this person has been here in a transient nature, which means this was a transitionary thing for them. This was not supposed to be their permanent residence. You sign that affidavit. You show it to a police officer, and that police officer is supposed to hold the peace and remove that person from your property.

Now, it doesn't always go that way. Sometimes the police officer's a little reluctant to do that, so I'd tell you, if you go that way, have a copy of the unlawful detainer statute handy that says you can do that.

Tom: We were talking about unlawful detainer, and I was telling you that the videos we have, the one that's been looked at the most is how do I evict my brother. I'm sure for most people, it always starts the same way, like, "Hey, you said you only needed to stay a few days or a week, and here he is months or a year later, and you still hasn't moved out." How do I get my brother, sister, girlfriend, boyfriend, my child, how do I get them out of my house? They're not really a tenant.

We've established that it's an unlawful detainer, which I find pretty interesting. A distinction is that when you're evicting a tenant, usually the tenant's living in a different house where you're living. When you're talking about doing an unlawful detainer, you're talking about evicting somebody that you're living in the same house with.

Caleb: Very often, yes. It doesn't have to be that you're living in the same house, but that's a good way to put it, is that that's most often the scenario I encounter for unlawful detainer.

Tom: I wonder, have you had any personal experience about the client reporting back to you about, "Hey, man, this is really uncomfortable. The sheriff came out and served the unlawful detainer on my son, I'm trying to kick him out of my house, and it's uncomfortable now being with this very person I'm trying to evict out of my house."

Caleb: Oh, absolutely. It's something that's just going to be very uncomfortable, and so what I tell a lot of my clients who are filing these complaints is that if you have somewhere else to stay, and you're confident that person is not going to trash your house, consider that, because you're going to be in a very uncomfortable situation. It may take a few months to ultimately get this person out, so there's going to be a few months period where this person knows you're suing them, and you're also occupying the same place together.

Tom: Key there would be is that you hope and think they're not going to destroy your place, but number two, I suppose, personal safety comes into play, too.

Caleb: Absolutely.

Tom: Because if you've got this person that's living in your house, and you keep telling them, "Hey, I want you out of here," and they won't move out of there, there's some kind of instability going on there.

Caleb: I've had clients get themselves attachable cameras that they could put on themselves, just so everything's documented, they're safe, there's no accusations or anything like that, and that's a smart thing to do as well.

Tom: I've never heard of such a thing before. What, you're saying that every time they're having an encounter with a person they're trying to evict, they're recording it?

Caleb: Oh yes, they're turning on that camera just like the police have on their chest, strap it on, turn it on, and everything's documented that way.

Tom: That's some good advice. We appreciate that. Caleb, if somebody wants to call you about an unlawful detainer, they can reach you right now, but what number would they call you during the week?

Caleb: 321-356-7984, Tom.