Catch-up!

I know I haven’t posted in almost a week, but it’s been a pretty crazy week. We have a rental property and the renters haven’t paid any rent since September, which has been a cause of stress for me. I’m trying not to let it bother me, but right now Tim is laid off and I have maternity leave coming up, but God provides! I believe he lead us to purchase the rental so he’s not going to let it be our financial ruin as long as we are prudent with it.

We started the eviction process back in December, which we have never had to do in the almost five years we’ve been landlords, so that was a little stressful. Imagine this, me, with all three boys the day after Christmas trekking through the courthouse and adjunct building to figure out where we needed to go and get them all of the pertinent information. I put Simon in the stroller so at least he was contained and then had each of the other boys hold one of the handles with me and we all did pretty good, but it was intimidating to say the least. However, now we know how the process works, where to go and how much it costs (we didn’t hire an attorney since that’s more out of pocket).

Bonus: Eli now understands that if you don’t pay your bills you get kicked out.

This last week was the court date for the eviction. Most people go ahead and move out so the eviction gets dropped and isn’t on their record, but not these tenants, the last time Tim talked to them, after they were served with the Notice to Appear, they told Tim they weren’t going to pay or move out, they’d just see us in court.

Which doesn’t make any sense because our understanding was if you hadn’t paid your rent, you got evicted pretty much always. We went to court and listened to all the eviction cases that went before us, they do the ones with lawyers first, then management companies, then people like us. (Apparently the time we have to take off of our ‘day jobs’ isn’t as important as those folks, but it gave us an opportunity to know what to expect so I’m not complaining-and they go fast.)

We were sworn in and Tim did our talking. He answered very quickly just like the attorney’s did-he’s good like that. And that’s all we had to say. The magistrate then went on to question the tenants and they (he) proceeded to lie (which the magistrate could figure out) and dug himself a hole and in the end the magistrate said he was granting the eviction.

The wife, was all, “What? What just happened? Are we evicted?” The husband answered her, “Yeah.” Tim and I were trying not to laugh—apparently she was the husband’s latest victim of lies. Like the lies he told us, “I sent the check. I’ll bring it right now….” He must have told her, “They can’t evict us, we broke the toilets and they haven’t fixed them!” She should have known better than to believe him; she was in on the lies he was telling us.

Now we are waiting for the official paperwork so we can go over with the sheriff and change the locks. Of course, this is a long weekend so we have to wait until Tuesday’s mail and I cringe at the damage they are inflicting on the house before they leave. But at least they’ll be gone and maybe we can get someone who will pay the rent. Or at least we won’t have to deal with them!

Plus there’s been lots of other things going on, like the furnace quit working. Thankfully we have our wood stoves, but this weekend was the coldest so far this winter, so we had to get it fixed, and fast! A $50 trip charge to the furnace people and he told Tim how to fix it and what to clean, and now it’s working better than it has since we moved in. I’m so glad Tim’s handy!

I’ll try to do some more posts this week to catch up on the Everyday things that have been going at our house. Bear in mind though I’m at 32 weeks and don’t have the energy a lot of days!