Legal Question in Real Estate Law in Massachusetts

Re: evicition

You can go to District Court and file a supplementary process action. If the tenant maliciously

damaged the apartment, it may constitute a crime. If that is the case, you can go to District Court and

file an application for a criminal complaint to issue.

Alan Pransky

Law Office of Alan J. Pransky

20 Eastbrook Road

Re: evicition

Get your back rent? Probably not, and almost certainly not soon.

How much did the damage come to? How much back rent was ordered?

Depending upon the totals, and depending on various factors about

the tenant and your information on the tenant, it may or may not be

worthwhile even to pursue the tenant.

1) Do you know where the tenant lives now? Works?

2) Do you have any copies of any recent checks from the tenant that

would tell you where they bank(ed)?

3) Does the tenant own a car or any other thing value?

4) Will the tenant be looking for any credit anytime soon, or want to

move into a place that checks credit ratings?

5) Do you have the tenant's current phone number? Does the tenant

hang up on you when you call (or don't you even try)? Did you use

a lawyer for the eviction work (and is that lawyer willing to take on

this collection work)?

I've got a couple of deadbeats that I pursue, sometimes for a very

long time. It's a tough row (road?) to hoe, and the main key is to

be patient with your lawyer because it is a very slow process.

In one case, I had an ex-tenant grabbed from his place of work

and brought into the courthouse, and was to be kept there in a wee jail until the

judge and I showed up, when he'd have been ordered to pay the cost of the civil

arrest ($250) plus what he previously owed, of course. Instead, the

arrestor took him to his bank and got cash for the whole amount.

In another case, my client is owed $5,000 by a married couple; they applied to live

in an apartment building and were turned down because I'd listed them with a landlord's

reporting bureau service I'm part of. I have found out their new phone number after

they moved leaving no forwarding address at the post office or elsewhere nor a forwarding

phone number using a certain detective agency. But I still haven't collected the money.

It's mounting at 12% per year simple interest and it's been a couple of years, and they're

not going to be able to get any credit until they reckon with me.

(I know one guy who paid

a bill 8 years later to clear up his credit report.)

Stuart Williams

Law Offices of Stuart J. Williams

21 Walter St.

Newton, MA

02459-2509

[email protected]

OR [email protected]

Tel. 617 527-0050 (or toll-free 888 527-0050).

Call if I can be of service to you.

Stuart Williams

Law Offices of Stuart J. Williams

21 Walter St.