Legal Question in Credit and Debt Law in Pennsylvania

My husband and I co-signed on a rental lease for our son and daughter-in-law. They failed to pay the rent owed at the end of the lease. We were not aware of this until a year later when the landlord sued us for payment. Should he haved contacted us to inform us of the delinquency? It states in the summons that we ignored his demands for payment, but we never heard anything from him. We received this summons by certified mail from the court on August 20,2013 and we brought the balance owed to his attorney's office the next day, August 21,2013.


Asked on 8/23/13, 8:14 am

1 Answer from Attorneys
Rachel Hunter

And your question is? If you paid in full then the landlord should have dismissed the lawsuit.

As a co-signer you were not entitled to any other notice. Notice was sent by the landlord to your son and daughter. While it would have been better practice to make a written demand first, that failure does not excuse you from liability as a co-signer.

Co-signing is always a bad deal for the co-signer. If your son and daughter-in-law needed a co-signer for the lease it meant either that they had no credit or more likely that they had bad credit and had defaulted on apartment leases in the past. If this was the case this should have been a red flag to you that they would do so again. Do not co-sign anything for them ever again.

Since you paid the rent, you can now sue your son and daughter-in-law for reimbursement.

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Answered on 8/23/13, 5:08 pm


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