Legal Question in Real Estate Law in California

Re: Property left in house

Was the person a tenant of yours, a co-tenant with you (of a third-party landlord), or your guest? Their rights and your duties may be determined accordingly.

The responsibilities of a landlord to a former tenant are set forth in the Civil Code at sections 1980 through 1991. They're obviously too long to quote here, but if the landlord-tenant situation applied to your arrangement, you should look them up and use the form of notice shown in the code.

If the person were a co-tenant with you of a third-party landlord, you could leave the property behind at the end of your tenancy, and it would become the landlord's problem under the same Civil Code provisions.

If the person were your guest, I'd say the general provisions covering involuntary bailments. Civil Code section 1846(a) says you owe the bailor (depositor) only a "slight" degree of care at to the deposited thing, and 1847(b) says that your slight duty of care ceases a reasonable time after uyour giving notice to the depositor.

This provision doesn't give you ownership, however. If you sold the stuff, you would owe him the proceeds of sale, possibly subject to your deducting the costs of sale and reasonable storage charges. I would also say that selling the stuff should be done in a commercially-reasonable manner; this may mean selling on eBay, a garage sale, at a flea market or the like, depending upon the nature and value of the property. Things that can't be sold efficiently can probably be dumped.

I would advise keeping a good record of the property and your efforts to notify and efficiently to dispose of each article, as well as your costs and time.