Pls help me understand evictions/risks...

First I want to ask non-lawyers not to give specific legal advice. Sharing opinions, experiences, etc. -that's obviously fine.

OK... your "very vague" attorney sounds like he knows what he is talking about. Your best bet may be to drag out the proceeding as long as possible. Court cases take time. If your lawyer is smart, he will get a couple of postponements of the initial court date. The biggest point is to read your lease and see if you have a legal fees clause. If you do, I don't know that I'd even fight. If your attorney thinks you will lose, you may have to pay landlord's legal bills in the end, which could be anywhere from 2,000 to a heckuvalot more.
Good luck!

I'm not a liar I mean lawyer so I will only make the following recommendations. I am sure Mel will let you know what your legal rights are. I would try to speak directly with the landlord and try to work something out. I am quite confident he doesn't want the aggravation of going to court either and hopefully you can work out a solution that is fair for both you and the landlord. If you plan on renting again you should try to avoid tenant court because that is public information and will be on your record whether you win or not. If you decide to fight this I would recommend getting an attorney like Mel or someone who understands tenant/landlord rights and has experience in this area. To me it's not worth the money , time and aggravation even though the law might be on your side.

I agree with everything spunky said except that it doesn't seem like the law is on your side (according to your own attorney) - so it's REALLY not worth the money time and aggravation.

Hi, Mel. Evicted, Mel gives good advice. My thought on this, as is my reaction to all litigation, is to attempt to work something with the other party so as to avoid the legal process entirely. People are often better at resolving things among themselves than the courts and lawyers are. If you are truly willing to vacate by the end of June (a mere 4.5 months from now), the LL may be receptive to you making a legal commitment to vacate in June (as in a lease that expires then). Perhaps you will have to give the LL some 'incentive' to accept this accomodation such as some extra monthly rent and/or a specific very large amount of money you agree to pay the LL if you don't leave by June. This way, everyone saves legal litigation fees, stress, court delays, and uncertainty.

If you are comfortable talking to the LL yourself, you can try that. Or you can have a lawyer who understands your desire to negotiate a resolution talk to the LL's attorney. The point here is to avoid ramping up the tension and keep this as amicable as possible under the circumstances. If there is no accomodation to be had, you are no worse off than diving headlong into litigation.

Agree with kylewest as well. And I agree with malraux's take on the other thread on this same question.

It's a real love-fest folks!

I also love the OP's lawyer, who told her "you will lose but it will take a while." Hey - you can't beat that kind of honesty!

Interesting both Mel and Kylewest regurgitated my recommendations and then congratulated themselves for agreeing with each others. Unless you like spending money on people who truly understand the art of confusion and and double talk try to resolve this on your own.

Agree with spunky about agreeing with kylewest, and agree with both on the substantce, unless you want to sue, in which case I agree with Mel, which is me.

Why do I worry that this is only the beginning of a 1000 entry thread... Evicted, you have no idea what you might have unleashed...

evicted could you please let us know where your building is located or approximately where it is located. Also some details on your lease would be appreciated. How long have you been married?

"and agree with both on the substantce"--Mel

I'm allowed to screw up on spelling and grammar not you. What college did you get your law degree from Mel?

Am I missing something??? Evicted-- It seems that your landlord is sending you a 30 day notice as per the terms of the legal contract you both agreed to. It appears that your husband believes that his disinclination to be inconvenienced during the school year trumps any ethical or legal obligation to adhere to the contract you signed. So you are planning on becoming a holdover tenant and subjecting your landlord to all sorts of headache and expense. Yourself as well. Why not either try to negotiate a few extra months, or just suck it up and honor the terms of the contract you signed?

Agree with nyg. Is this why landlords get a bad name because the tenant will not follow the contract. This causes the landlord to spend time and money that in the end will cause the landlord to be stricter the next time just to protect himself. Talk to the landlord, make some arrangement instead of looking to take him to court. Maybe there is something else other than paying rent on time why the landlord wants the place vacated.

eviction I noticed you have three threads titled "Pls help me understand evictions/risks.."

Based on that and that alone you should be evicted no ifs, ands, or buts.

Oh come one spunky it's not like I'm proofreading my posts for typos on streeteasy. I assure you any paper I submit to a judge will be error-free.
As for what "law college" I went to -- suffice it to say that, in the words of my favorite commenter, I was "phi beta kappa, order of the coif, top ten law firm for my first ten years, now international law firm with 1600 attorneys."

Also, to continue the love fest, I agree with nyg. Evicted is basically saying "Help! My landlord is acting within his legal rights and I want to screw him over. How do I do this?" That said, I will still help out to the extent it doesn't cross any lines.

By the way, nyg - you may find it interesting that contract law generally does not contemplate the moral/ethical obligation of binding a person to the contract he has made. Whole body of law and academic commentary on "efficient breaches" and how we should encourage people to walk away from contracts if they can get better deals elsewhere. Not saying I agree with this, just pointing it out in case you're interested.

the spunkster really needs a nice vacation, somewhere warm. think ocean breezes, spunky ...

Thanks Mel, I do find that interesting actually.

By the way, have been meaning to ask: what the hell is order of the coif??

check this out; I'm sure they all look lovely in those silly wigs - http://www.orderofthecoif.org/

OP: Thanks everyone. Today we instructed our attorney to call the LL's attorney to try to negotiate a deal to stay through June, until school is out. We always wanted to do this but our attorney reached out a couple times to them without a response. Hopefully the LL wants to avoid court too. I appreciate the feedback.

Why in the world would you want to get a lawyer involved in this? If I were your LL, since I'm not a lawyer, I would now have to transfer him to my lawyer thus pissing me off because my lawyer is going to bill me for the call. Do you really want someone like Kylewest and Mel getting involved and making a mountain out of an ant hole by further complicating things so they can jack up the bill for both the LL and yourself.

Mel, in all fairness, you're only giving one side of the picture with respect to contracts. Or, had "Contract as Promise" not been written when you were in law school? There's actually a fairly wide body of literature about the moral obligations in contracts. And, while efficient breaches may work well with manufacturers supplying widgets, I imagine landlord-tenant law would be better understood in a somewhat less fully economic fashion.

evicted the posting above clearly illustrates why you shouldn't get a lawyer involved.

To Evicted:

I was in your shoes last year. We consulted an attorney who said the same as yours. But everyone involved in the real estate business told us that if we allow landlord to file an eviction notice in court (which he can do the day after your 30 day notice ends), we will never rent in NYC again. Most ental aopplications do ask whether you have ever been a subject in an eviction proceeding. So i think your husband is recommending a very bad course of action. Also, do you really want to live with 6 months of legal stress?

I recommend that you tell the landlord you are leaving but need a bit more time to find a new place. get him to give you 60 days instead of 30. Then get out. Once you find a new place with a lease you will be much happier.

PS: I think the city rules do require that the 30 day letter include an entire calendar month. So a letter delivered on January 30 could have an effictive removal date of march 1. But a letter dated february 2 could only be effective april 1, after a full calendar month (march). Check your letter and lawyer on this. But again, you want to work this out with landlord before he files eviction. Once he does that you lose.

Evicted, please post full name and address so my assistant can send out the bill.
Cheers.

JohnDoe - Thank you for pointing out Fried's Contracts as Promise. Never read it, but I did look it up. In my post, I was talking about how courts generally treat contracts - as obligations without moral/ethical dimensions.

Here are excerpts from some reviews of Fried's book courtesy of Amazon:

"Fried calls into question some of the most deeply held assumptions of contract law [and] argues powerfully for a moral basis of contract." - NY Law Journal

"Professor Fried is conscious that he is confronting a considerable weight of modern contract scholarship." Harvard Law Review

And Epstein himself said "To have someone argue for the importance of moral reasoning in contracts, or for that matter any common law subject, is refreshing."

So it seems there is an acknowledgement that the common law generally does not consider moral dimensions in contracts, as I said.

However, I'm not really arguing and not interested in arguing about this. I'm not an academic (yet) and I was only remembering something from school that I thought nyg would find interesting, which he/she did. "So that's all I have to say 'bout that."

But again, thanks for pointing me to the book. Maybe I'll read it.

In response to NYG's commentary:
Assuming month to month means there is no current lease in place what contract is being broken? I believe a 30 day notice is mandated by the State of New York and considering the NYC market in particular this is an uncomfortably short period of time to find a new home. The landlord is offering the legal minimum which isn't very civil with a family with kids who have been good tenants.

evicted now imagine having Mel call the LL and he starts engaging the LL with the above nonsense. What do you think the LL will. Just make sure you have good alarm system on you door.

OP: Spunky: LL already has his lawyer involved, they sent the first notices.

smartmoney 123: I think the LL has already filed in court, so probably too late to keep it off my credit report even if we negotiate a deal asap. Any idea how long it takes for this to show up on the credit report? If it takes a while, maybe we will get lucky and find a new place before it shows up?

Only 780 more posts needed to overtake "Where are the idiots..." thread.

You should still first try to communicate directly with the decision maker who is the LL. Now if he has no interest in talking with you directly then and only then go to option two.

spunky, I know this sounds wimpy but neither my husband or myself feels comfortable dealing with the main guy at the management company who is a real ass. All the documents we have receivec say to correspond only with his attorney. The letter we got yesterday with the returned rent check said at the end to contact the law firm to "try and resolve this matter." Probably just a form letter/standard ending but maybe they do really wan to talk about it before landing in housing court. We asked our attorney to call them back and negotiate something that will let us stay through June. We are prepared to pay more rent and sign something stating our departure date.

Evicted ----- perhaps you can take comfort in the knowledge that many, many of us out here loathe dealing with the real asses who seem to make up the majority of the main guys at the many management companies in our fair city. So many, many asses . . .