Legal liability if we cosign lease

Parents Forum
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<p>Of course he feels it’s silly; it’s not his money and he’s not mature enough yet to put his parents financial liability ahead of being “super-excited.” </p>

<p>The landlord wants you to co-sign exactly because of doomsday scenarios. Your son is surely smart enough to understand that but he’s trying to distract you with silliness about rent when the real issue is how much the damages are going to be at the end of the year.</p>

<p>You either have the willingness and the money to pay for tens of thousands of dollars (possibly more) in damages and court fees or you do not. </p>

<p>Personally, I would be unwilling to spend my time and money to help my son open a defacto frat house because he’s “super-excited” but that is a decision you need to make for your family.</p>

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<p>Hello everyone, S2 here. </p>

<p>Thanks for all the input! Liability is absolutely the issue at stake here. Rent is great, roommates are great, but problems with damage do occur and I would be foolish not to recognize that.</p>

<p>There aren’t really a lot of other options on the market unfortunately, and all the other places I’ve checked with have required a guarantor as well. With this in mind, I’m trying to find a way to limit liability for my parents as much as possible.</p>

<p>We will be moving all but essential furniture from our main living areas and into a large backroom where it will be stored until the battlefield known as a school year is completed in the rest of the house!</p>

<p>I typed up this tenant/guarantor agreement last night which I hope provides more coverage for my parents. I know we have a lot of lawyers on this thread and I’d love to get your opinion especially.</p>

<p><a href=“https://docs.google.com/fileview?id=0B7yKaKp67681OGU5ODlhYWYtMzBkZi00NDQwLTk5ODEtNDQ0NjhhZTQ5NDVj&hl=en&authkey=CP68tJIN[/url]”>https://docs.google.com/fileview?id=0B7yKaKp67681OGU5ODlhYWYtMzBkZi00NDQwLTk5ODEtNDQ0NjhhZTQ5NDVj&hl=en&authkey=CP68tJIN&lt;/a&gt; </p>

<p>Of course, no matter how evenly you divide it up, if the damage is catastrophic 20% can still break the bank. :-(</p>

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<p>sorry bad link. Here it is.</p>

<p><a href=“https://docs.google.com/fileview?id=0B7yKaKp67681NDY3MDhlNGQtNTc2Mi00MGJkLTkyMWItOTY1OTA2YWYxNjQy&hl=en&authkey=COTl4aMH[/url]”>https://docs.google.com/fileview?id=0B7yKaKp67681NDY3MDhlNGQtNTc2Mi00MGJkLTkyMWItOTY1OTA2YWYxNjQy&hl=en&authkey=COTl4aMH&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

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<p>Best way is to keep sober all the time and make sure no one damages the property. I have a friend who was the president of his fraternity in his college days. He said that once he became president he never drank at frat parties–at least one person needed to be able to think clearly to avoid liability issues was his thinking.</p>

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<p>Wow. I would be absolutely terrified to be either the student or the parents. The liability from the swimming pool alone should be sobering. </p>

<p>Consider this scenario: “Jane” comes over (invited) and drinks too much and falls into the pool. She is noticed and fished out but has suffered brain damage. Her parents are poor. She has no health insurance. Jane’s parents HAVE to sue the various roommates/families because that’s the only way they can afford have Jane spoon fed for the next forty years. Even if the case is thrown out or no damages awarded, the wear and tear and legal costs are huge. </p>

<p>We have friends who co-signed for their son to rent a ten guy house. The savvy landlord required all families to attend an orientation – but, very predictable, a couple of the guys were always late with rent and a couple of guys bailed out of school before the end of the school year. Parents were on the hook for the difference – and son got really, really tired of chasing down rent payments. </p>

<p>There’s lots of stuff I’d love to have. I don’t get most of it. I think these parents are nuts to expose themselves to financial ruin because they “love” their son. Doesn’t he love them back? How can he even ask this sort of exposure of them?</p>

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<p>The lawyers on here are not going to give you legal advice over the internet. A lawyer in that state needs to look at this situation and advise your parents and you.</p>

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<p>To Timely S – agreeing to something and enforcing that agreement are two separate things. You guys can make any agreement you want among yourselves - but it doesn’t change the landlord’s rights to go after your parents for 100% of the money if the others don’t come through on their end.</p>

<p>Are you C.W.? or is C.W. one of the other renters? C.W. is really on the hook for the most, because of being in the position of having to collect rents and utility payments from all the rest. No matter how good everyone’s intentions, C.W. is going to find he’s coming up short in some way just about every month – there will always be someone who is out of town the weekend the money is due, forgets, needs a couple of more days, etc. C.W. will get the money in the end, but it will never be there from the other 4 on time – or it if is, it will only be if C.W. is willing and able to act the role of the tough guy all through the rental. </p>

<p>On the other hand, the other tenants can be messed up if they pay money to C.W. on time, but C.W. fails to meet his obligation to pay the landlord on time. So C.W. needs to be an extremely responsible and highly organized person.</p>

<p>If you guys are signing a 12-month lease, then each person’s rights are the same – they have a right of occupancy for all 12 months so long as they don’t violate the terms of the lease. If the rental is month-to-month – then under California law, you would need to give 30 days written notice to evict anybody. I don’t think you can get around that by writing a different agreement among the tenants – (you’ve set something up that lets housemates evict one another on 2 weeks notice). But if all housemates have signed the lease or rental agreement, then each has an independent right to stay there as long as they haven’t breached the agreement – so you guy are going to have to work out most household disagreements in some way other than thinking you can just boot whichever roommate you don’t like. (Things that are illegal, like drug use, would be lease violations in any case – so you could kick someone out for that – but other than that, if 5 guys sign a 12 month lease, than 5 guys each have the independent and co-extensive right to occupy the place for 12 months, as long as the landlord is getting his rent.)</p>

<p>There are some resources for students posted on the UCSC web site here:
[UC</a> Santa Cruz - Community Rentals Rental Laws and Agreements](<a href=“http://www.housing.ucsc.edu/cro/resources3.html]UC”>http://www.housing.ucsc.edu/cro/resources3.html)</p>

<p>You might also find this web site helpful:
[California</a> Tenants - California Department of Consumer Affairs](<a href=“http://www.dca.ca.gov/publications/landlordbook/terminations.shtml]California”>http://www.dca.ca.gov/publications/landlordbook/terminations.shtml)</p>

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<p>Please keep in mind that the community includes sweethearts of the roomies. I rented a house with 3 other grad students and things were great for one semester. Then one of the gals hooked up with a user/looser. He was around constantly and was a pain. His beloved felt we didn’t appreciate him (yep!) and she and he packed up one night and flounced out – we came home the next night to no power. She had the utilities in her name and had called and had the power turned off. </p>

<p>We had to scramble to restart utilities and come up with another rent payer. I would have never guessed we would have had these problems because the young woman seemed very stable and reliable at the start.</p>

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<p>D came home with a $90,000 lease for me to sign. I laughed because she didn’t see anything wrong with it. It was 15 girls and three apartments in this building in Collegetown. One of the parents - NY States Attny or something finally got the landlord to at least split the lease into the three individual apartments. So, we were on the hook for $30K, but I new 4/5 of the girls and their parents as they were all on the soccer team, so It worked out fine. One of the girls left second semester but sublet her room so it was ok.
The prime apartments within walking distance go quickly and many of them are dumps, but they really hold your feet to the fire in getting their money.</p>

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<p>My son is moving into a rental with 4 other guys in his CA college town. The town limits the number of unrelated adults in a rental house to 5. It’s an unfurnished house with 5 small bedrooms. The landlord requested a letter from each parent stating that the parent will be responsible for payment of their son’s rent, not to exceed 1/5th of the total rent amount per month for 1 year. Each of the guys signed their own lease with the landlord and each put up 1/5th of the deposit.</p>

<p>I thought this was reasonable - I hope I’m not missing something in terms of my liability. I’ve known one of the other boys and his family for 7 years. The landlord has a long history of renting to college students (“no growing marijuana on the property” was added to the lease). I do plan on looking into renter’s insurance before school starts next month.</p>

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<p>Oy. </p>

<p>I am not Jewish, so maybe that is not appropriate (I did grow up in NY suburbs; does that make it OK?)</p>

<p>Anyway: Oy. On the hook for $90,000 is too much for me.</p>

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<p>Can you imagine $90,000 and I think there was crying involved? “Its the only place we can get” and it was a dump to begin with. Even I who is normally agreeable had to put my foot down on that one. Ah, we laugh about that now. $30,000 for one of the apartments was bad enough. Then they had a fire at the chinese restaurant downstairs and we had to call the Fire Marshall before D would go back in. We say we should have bought one of these dumps as S went there when D graduated. And of course no one ever gets the security deposit back. It wasn’t even a cosign. It was the parents sign the lease. Supply and Demand.</p>

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<p>An agreement is good. Everyone knows what they are responsible for. I am not a lawyer but I think if it is not well written, it is not enforceable. calmom point out about the eviction notice. You cannot conflict with the law. Do you need to have cause for termination, notice of violation, time to cure, etc, etc. The agreement is good thru the termination date tenant agreement but the date is not defined.</p>

<p>Even you have the Tenant Agreement, that still does not reduce the risk of the Guarantor. The Guarantor is still responsible for the rent and damages. He just hope he can collect from the other party if things go bad.</p>

<p>You may consider something without a pool (or look for an apartment with a pool) or a smaller party. Maybe your parent will be more willing to be a Guarantor.</p>

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<p>When I referred to an agreement being (or not being) “enforceable” – I meant to include practical as well as legal concerns. Even if the agreement clearly sets forth legal obligations --that doesn’t mean that everyone is going to do what they promised to do. The only enforcement mechanism is to go to court – but that can be costly and time consuming. Are you really going to sue the family of some kid who moved out without giving notice and didn’t pay his share of the rent for the month that he left? </p>

<p>That’s why the landlord wants the guarantor – the landlord doesn’t want to have to go to court, so the landlord wants as many people on the hook as possible, with the hope that at least one tenant or co-signer is honest and reliable enough to pay amounts owed without the landlord having to take them to court. </p>

<p>I appreciate that Timely’s Son is treating this seriously enough to post here and to try to work on a draft agreement among the co-tenants – but if I was the parent, this would still be a no-go for me. It really isn’t about the rent – it is about all the other stuff that could go wrong. Five college guys in a house is a recipe for problems. </p>

<p>I’d note that my kids have lived in a variety of household/roommate situations – but they id it without expecting their parents to be on the hook. I realize that the guarantor requirement is probably non-negotiable with the landlord – but again, sometimes we don’t get what we want. I just don’t think its a reasonable risk to ask a parent to take.</p>

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<p>There are places that are unfurnished and do not have pools. </p>

<p>You sound like a smart kid, don’t insult the intelligence of the rest of us in an effort to get your parents to believe that this is the only option.</p>

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<p>pug, I’m certainly not trying to insult your intelligence, though perhaps it needs to be. </p>

<p>I never said it was the ONLY option, only that there were few options on the market. Most of the others are overpriced, dumpy apartments which are not particularly close to school. Implications of lack of love for my parents are equally unappreciated as is your condescension.</p>

<p>I have after all this mess come to a very agreeable position for myself. The “master roommate” has agreed to rent the house with himself and the three other tenants on the lease and will allow me to sublet my room from them without guarantor. This is allowable under the terms of the lease.</p>

<p>It’s a little crazy on their part but I agreed to pay my portion of the rent six months in advance so that’s a big advantage for them.</p>

<p>Thanks for all the advice y’all,
Timely’s S</p>

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<p>Timely, it’s great that you have found a solution that will work for you and not require a cosigner.</p>

<p>But you seem to be the one with the condescending attitude. We have kids who are willing to live in “dumpy” apartments that are not particularly close to their schools – and to figure out the whole rental/roommate thing without relying on parents. They looked for places or situations that they can afford, and they didn’t always end up with their first choice options. </p>

<p>I hope that you guys are able to take good care of the house you are renting and properly maintain the yard and pool. If a year from now your parents can look back on this and think they were silly to worry – that will be a good outcome. </p>

<p>But I agree with pug – I don’t buy the “few options” line. One reason I don’t buy it is that my daughter has recently graduated from college and is living in New York city, with a job – and she has managed to find an affordable place to live in a city with a very tough rental market – only she’s living in Harlem and to Brooklyn, 22 miles away. So we’re not all that moved over your plight. </p>

<p>If you are getting the housing you want, on your own – that’s wonderful. But most kids are very happy if their parents are helping them pay the rent on the “dumpy” apartments you have such disdain for.</p>

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<p>Not a bad lease, but may I offer couple of suggestions? Not an atty, but an Ohio LL. I can only tell u what jumps at me, if this contract were offered to me by a prospective tenant.</p>

<p>2b. Liability would seem to exclude tenants if a tenants’ guest damaged property. Nice for tenant if he can get it, but unlikely an experienced LL would go for it. Clean this up.
Is one fellow’s guest the guest of all? What if a mutual friend of tenants visit? Who’s guest is that?</p>

<p>Item 2c. this says an early exiting tenant must pay rent for the duration of the lease. Illegal in Ohio. In Ohio, landlord(in this case the other students) must try to mitigate damages- find another tenant. Exiting tenant must pay until replacement is found. Remaining tenants are not permitted to just sit on their hands and collect rent from exiting tenant for an empty room. Sample contract excuses remaining roomies from having to find a replacement. Check your local laws.</p>

<p>In Ohio, “Damages” basically means what a LL is out because of a failure on the tenants’ part. It can mean a hole in the wall, or unpaid rent- economic damage. I think you mean physical damage in the sample lease.</p>

<p>2.a “unknown” does this mean mysterious, unexplained damage? Vandals? Aliens? Or does it mean you can’t definitively determine which tenant/guest was at fault?</p>

<p>3.b In Ohio, this would be illegal, even if all parties agreed to it. In Ohio, a tenant cannot be forced out in 2 weeks at the whim of the majority unless they are in a week-to-week lease. There are certain necessary conditions and then specific legal steps to follow to force a person out. Check your state laws.</p>

<p>As Calmom mentioned, what some don’t know is that even if a person agrees to certain terms that doesn’t mean they are legal and enforceable by law. For example: A desperate borrower might borrow money from an individual at 50% interest, but if he reneges, the interest is not enforceable in court even if it is proven those were the terms at the time of the loan. It is illegal to charge 50% so it would not be enforced.</p>

<p>And remember- the whole reason for a contract is to protect both parties and explain both parties’ obligations. If everything would run perfect, we’d need no contract. Similarly for requiring a guarantor. S may not believe a doomday scenario is possible, but I’ll bet Landlord does, and prob from learning the hard way in the past.</p>

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<p>I don’t think it is condescending to expect the parents to pay for stuff related to getting an education. That is one of their jobs. And it does involve love when discussing whether you would be willing to spend money on them.</p>

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<p>Parents aren’t required to pay for luxury digs for their kids – it would be perfectly reasonable for Timely to tell his kid that the “dumpy apartment” was the best he could expect his parents to do for him. </p>

<p>And it is definitely is NOT a parental “job” to pay for college education – it is a GIFT from parent to child. Once the kid is 18 and out of high school – legally that person is an adult and parents are certainly are under no obligation to fund their college experience, much less their choice of living arrangements.</p>