Legal Question in Real Estate Law in California

Did the roommate pay any of the deposit? To whom? If he paid it to you, you should have paid him when he moved out, less a reasonable deduction for your costs to clean up. If he paid it to the landlord, he is entitled to get his share back, but it doesn't necessarily have to come to him directly from the landlord. The landlord can make the entire deposit refund to any one of the former tenants -- you, your wife, or the roommate. The former tenants are agents for one another. It isn't up to the landlord to decide which of you gets how much of the deposit refund, or who left the garbootsch, or which did the damage.