questions & answers

Question: I had let a friend stay in my house as a tenant at will without a lease. She has recently become incarcerated. What is the best way to do an eviction? I will continue to keep her things in storage until she gets out of jail and not charge for that. I'm not asking for back rent or anything, just that she moves.

Answer: As a general rule, a true tenant at will is a person who is living in a dwelling without a rental agreement of any kind, whether written or verbal. (Under Arizona, a rental agreement does not need to take the form of a written lease.) Strictly speaking, only a court may order a tenant’s eviction. What the landlord may do in the sort of situation that you have described is terminate the rental agreement by providing the tenant with 30 days’ written notice. The important thing for the landlord to do is to document both the person’s relationship to the dwelling – is she paying rent? is she physically present? etc. – and the person’s receipt of notice from the landlord that they may no longer reside in the dwelling so that the person cannot later complain that her rights as a tenant were violated.