Legal Question in Credit and Debt Law in Virginia

Re: about personal property

What your family memeber is saying (about being charged with theft) is not correct. You are under no obligation (legally) to continue digging into your bank account to pay the monthly storage bill, and you are entitled to the previous storage payments. So you are entitled to raise the money to pay off the bill (and to avoid paying further monthly bills) by selling some or all of the stuff.

However, since this obviously bothers you (about being a crime), then you should give yourself the protection and reassurance of filng a "Warrant in Debt" in small claims court for repayment of the money that you have loaned. This will create a paper trail and clear record that you are owed the money, and will protect you if any one makes a stink later on.

I don't think it is required, but it is easy to do, and therefore you should go ahead and document officially that money is owed to you. Simply go to the clerk's office and ask for the forms to file a case in small claims court.

Although they WILL NOT give you legal advice if you ask them WHERE on the form do you put X information or Y information, they will end up telling you everything you want to know. (HINT: Go in the afternoon when they are not as busy as in the morning.)

Since you say she is in Maryland, but the stuff is in Virginia, you will have to go through a process of BOTH mailing a copy to her by first-class mail AND serving the lawsuit (Warrant in Debt form) on the Secretary fo the Commonwealth to be forwarded to her. (However, if she comes into VA you can simply have a neutral person HAND it to her and then file an affidavit. The Clerk can give you that form also.)

You should probably open the storage unit and find things that can be sold for enough money to pay for storage for everything else for another month. For example, if she is homeless, very large objects will be a problem for her to move around. So if you sold something large and impersonal it might cover the storage unit fee for another month or two to save everything else that she has, which might be more personal.

HOWEVER...

Since your family member apparently has no place to take the items and is not employed, this is a no-win situation.

I definitely do NOT want to ENCOURAGE you to sell her stuff or cause her to lose it.

The fact that you have a LEGAL right to do this, does not mean that you SHOULD do it. For the price of a few months' rent, I do not think you should harm a family relationship or put her in a terrible position of losing her items.

Motivating her to hurry up and get another job is not a bad thing. Giving her notice that she has to fix the situation is not a bad thing.

But I don't think it is worth a few month's rent of a storage unit to either ruin family relationships or cause her to lose EVERYTHING after apparently losing a job and apartnment, etc.