Legal Question in Real Estate Law in California
My question is when you enter a lease with somebody else and when you enter the lease you let the landlord know that you will not be able to pay rent because your not working. Three months after you move you verbally tell the landlord at the beginning of the month that your leaving and to take your name off the lease well the landlord does not and the roommate that was staying there gets evicted. So you find this information out because you try to get a apartment and your denied because of the eviction. So you talk to a couple of different people and they let you know there is nothing you could do. So you contact the old landlord that put the eviction on your name and she informs you that it has been taken to court and that the eviction cost cannot be split up and that you have to pay the full amount for the eviction even though you were not the only person on the lease. My question is can the landlord do that??
2 Answers from Attorneys
Yes they can. It is called joint and several liability. When you jointly enter into a lease you don't just get to walk away by telling the landlord you are moving out. You signed a binding agreement. You breach it by moving out. That's not a problem as long as your roommate keeps honoring the contract. But if your roommate breaches it too, you are both jointly and severally liable. What that means is that the landlord can collect from both of you or from either of you. If he collects from only you, you have a right to indemnity and contribution from your roommate, but that is between you and them. You each owe the landlord the full amount.
I agree with Mr. McCormick. The landlord can go after either or both for all that is due. However, by way of clarification, the landlord cannot double collect.
If one tenant pays more than his or her share, evening things up is the tenants' problem, not the landlord's.
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