Legal Question in Landlord & Tenant Law in Iowa

my husband and I are curently being sued by our ex-landlord. We were served with a notice to quit and we all ready solved that in court and it was dismissed because she did not file it with in 30 days. She then served us a notice saying we had to be out by july 31, which we were out by july 7th. The legal aid attorney we had for the notice to quit tried to get her to drop the small claims aspect since we did everything properly and she did not. We were also told that with small claims proceedings we can not have an attorney for the hearing. She is trying to sue us for the deposit, may june and july's rent. The deposit was paid to her exhusband and from what we understand is that it was too be transfered to her when she got the property and if he or she did not do that properly then it is not our problem but thiers. This was to be done over 3 years ago. We had an inspection that was forced by the city as she did not have the house registered as a rental property and it was nowhere near up to code. My husband did a lot of work to get it up to code and even did some abestos removal. He told her he did all the work and she was ok with not recieving may's rent. She recants alot of her verbal agreements. We had issues with her the whole time we have lived in the home. We couldn't get any assitance for rent because she refused to give us a simple paper contract saying we were renting. She also would refuse to do real minor repairs, like fix leaking faucets and replace a shower head. The leak that was too the faucet outside caused alot of issues over the winter as it was freezing on the ground and caused alot of issues there. She would tell us that she would fix things once she got rent from us and NEVER did. She was constantly trying to blame us for her financial situation. We have some reciepts for the repairs that were done, not all since my inlaws bought most the supplies. We are not exactly sure what is going to go on with court since she is real shady and does illegal stuff. She tried to almost a year after she had possesion of the property from her exhusband since we had a problem with her paying the water bill and it was about to get shut off and the heat in the house is water based. She told us if we filed agisnt her she was going to say we were living there illegally. Which at that time legal aid her said she can not do that and if she tried it was going to get thrown out. We even left the house cleaner than it was when we moved it. She is trying to say we trashed it which is not true. What information do i need and what can we say when we go to mediation to get her to stop this?

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