Anyone know the Oklahoma law on landlord rights to personal property when the rental property has been delcared abandoned with the rent paid?

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When it rains it pours... but when the blessings come they overflow!

I would think the landlord could take over since it was abandonded. Is any of there belonging still in the residence? If it is I would think they landlord would have to show proof it was left and there is no intent to return and get a court order to enter so the previous tenat can't come back and say hey I paid rent and still live here. We have a guy on our street the last time I seen him pass through was about 6 months ago back in the summer he hasn't been around since, wish the landlord could do something and get rid of him and move somebody better hopefully in. You may do a google search for oklahoma lanlord laws and see what it brings up.

If the rent is paid, the tenant is still legally entitled to the space, whether they're living there or not. Many people rent apartments/homes etc. in other states just to gain residence status, but they never live in them.

If the house has no utilities for over 30 days then can it be declared abandoned even if the rent is paid? Thanks for the links to OSCN.net I will read up on the statues.

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When it rains it pours... but when the blessings come they overflow!

I'm running out the door for an appointment but this might help - you can print it out ..

Where is Midtowner, he will have some answers on this?

I'll check into it a bit more after I return.

http://www.ok.gov/OREC/documents/Lan...ndTenant03.pdf

A real estate attorney is the best resource if you feel the need to legally pursue this. I can get some referrals for you if you think you might need them.

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" You've Been Thunder Struck ! "

Thanks Karried and needa bddy. All this information is very helpful for me. I am not the landlord or the tenant. I have a family member that was the tenant. Due to family health problems she left the property and the electricity was turned off for 30 days. She continued to pay the rent but the refrigerator was damaged due to no electricity. The landlords came in and removed all her property without giving her any time limit to remove it herself. She didn't receive a notice either. They said they had the right to b/c they had declared the property abandoned. She paid them the damage fee's to their property and was able to get her possessions out of their personal storage. However they are threatning to garnish her checks now for $675.00 for their moving, labor, and storage fee's. She doesn't feel like they should have the right to charge her for those fee's b/c her property was damaged when they moved it and they stored it in a barn where mice got in to her clothes and chewed them. She also doesn't want to pay the moving fee because she could have removed her property herself but was never given the opportunity to. So I am trying to be the helping sister and find out what the landlords rights are in a situation like this and to let her know if she should get a lawyer or just pay the fee.

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I'm not a lawyer, just a law student who has recently started his chapter on the leasehold estate Nothing I say should ever be construed as legal advice, and if you plan to act on what I say, go to a real lawyer first. I won't be responsible if you take my advice.

Anyhow, I'm more studied up on the common law principles of leases, but my question to you would be this: Does your lease provide that the tennant MUST keep utilities active on the property? Other than that, I can't find any grounds for you to eject the tennant.

Generally speaking, if you don't have a bunch of provisions in place, (other than special common law and statutory duties such as the reasonable expecation of the tennant of the property being habitable, etc.), a lease delivers complete right to possession, even excluding the lessor for the duration of the lease.

Also, you can't just go and retake the premises, you'll have to obtain a forcible entry and detainer. Bddy just told you about the fee for the process server. There's also an aditional fee for the forcible entry and detainer. You can obtain the necessary paperwork up at the County Clerk's office (4th floor of the County Office building just north of the Courthouse over at Hudson and R.S. Kerr). Once you're on the 4th floor, turn our of the elevator, head away from the glass door/breezeway thing and take a left, then your first right. They should have some fill-in-the-blanks type forms there for you to fill out.

Of course, unless your tennant has expressly broken the lease, you're going to be out of luck and out a filing fee.

This will all be moot of course if you can just find your tennant and have them sign something expressly surrendering the property back to you.

(again, I'm not a lawyer, and this is more of a prediction than legal advice. If you plan to do anything here, I'd recommend that you find an attorney. If you're not sure of who to use, contact the Oklahoma Bar Association for a referral).

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Needa -- although the statutes discuss abandonment, it doesn't do a very good job of defining it. Perhaps this is by design so that the courts can decide? That's one thing I like about OSCN -- it has taken a few hints from Lexis and Westlaw and has citationizer tables for each statute.

You pull the relevant statute, and if there's an ambiguity, you click on one of those cases where it says "Discussed at length," and therein, you can usually find some factors discussing it.

In this case, I'm not sure I like the landlord's chances. Rent being paid points against abandonment. However, if the terms of the lease gave the landlord a right of entry subsequent an act or ommission of the tenant (say, not keeping utilities) the landlord would be okay to do as they did. The courts don't really favor these rights of entry and tend to construe the facts and contracts against them, but if it's so clear as the tenant being required to keep utilities turned on, then landlord has a strong case.

Again, to form any educated opinion here, we'd need to know whether the rental contract had any covenants for the tenant regarding the utilities.

If not, I don't see abandonment. Just being away from the premises is NOT abandonment. Just because a tenant is on vacation does not mean they abandoned their dwelling.

Your family member needs to contact a lawyer. This landlord seems to have really screwed up (that is, unless their rental agreement gave them the right to, and even then, it's a questionable set of facts).

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A quick question.. who turned off the electricity - the tenant or the landlord?

If the rent was paid, how/why did the landlord know/ claim that the residence was abandoned?

Do you have any more pieces to the puzzle? If the rent was paid, there is no way (in my opinion) that the landlord could take the personal possessions out of the home - is there more to the story such as burst pipes or water leaks - something else we're missing?

Yes, I definitely recommend a lawyer's advice.....

I'm like Midtowner, I hesitate to give advice without the counsel of a real estate attorney. Hopefully, we can offer some insight on these boards but it sounds like your relative really needs to talk to an attorney who specializes in tenant/lease law - they might have a solid case. Good luck!

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" You've Been Thunder Struck ! "

My sister left her house due to family health problems and was staying over an hour away. She periodicaly would check on the place. She didn't pay her electric bill and the electricity was turned off. The neighbors called the landlord and said the property had been abandoned and somehow her front door was open. The landlords went in to the property and found there was no electricity. She hadn't had electricity for 30 days in the house. She left food in the refrigerator which supposebly damaged it beyond repair. They immediately within the next 2 to 3 days removed all her possessions without contacting her. She said they never contacted her but they said they left one message. She went to her house to clean it up and found a note on the door that said this property has been delcared abandoned and that there was to be no trespassing. When she contacted the landlords they said they had to go in and regain possession of their property before any futher damage was done. They also told her that it looked like she was just missing and they had called the cops to make sure there wasn't a missing persons report. She told them what was going on and wanted her property because she had paid the rent and they accepted it. They made her pay for the damaged refrigerator and an exterminator ($600) before they gave her property back. Now that she has regain possession of her property there are alot of damages. Everything that she had that was glass has been broken. Her clothes were stored in a barn where mice broke in the sacks. The landlords still want another $675 from her to pay for their moving fee's (labor, packing, storage, truck/trailer). She doesn't feel like it is right to have to pay for that considering they should have legally given her a timeframe to remove the possessions herself. They have now threatened to garnish her payroll checks for the amount.

Now on the lease details - she had a 1 year lease (12 months). She satisified that lease. She was in her 15th month and they was never a new lease that was wrote up or signed after the 12th month. The landlords stated to her that had the right to regain control of their property to prevent further damage.

I have told her to consult with an attorney but right now she really can't go with that option because of money. So I was wanting to get some helpful advise from the semi-experts on this board. You have all been very helpful.

According to the tennant/landlord posting above it reads that even in the case of declared abandoment that a landlord should give a tenant a certified notice and 10 to 15 days to remove their property. That is how I understood it.

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When it rains it pours... but when the blessings come they overflow!

Karried, I think the case seems fairly simple. I would expect just about anyone who hangs a shingle out in front of an office to be able to help this person out with their issue. The legal questions seem to be 1) Whether there was abandonment. To that, I'd say that the rent being paid seems to indicate that 'no,' there is no abandonment. That seems to be a fact question, and I'm not going to do any research (because I'm lazy) to find out whether that is the case or not. 2) Whether there was a covenant for the tenant to pay and keep current utilities on the property. Even if this is the case, the landlord's proper remedy may not been in an ejectment of the tenant, it would have probably been in the tenant being held liable to any damages to the property as a result of the utilities being turned off. Modern courts will go to great lengths to avoid finding that an instrument grants a right of entry (at least nationwide, I have no idea what Oklahoma does).

Here are some good reads as far as cases on the subject:

This one talks about the types of damages that a tenant may seek when a landlord wrongfully takes the property:
http://www.oscn.net/applications/osc...43+227+188+35+

This case, an old 1916 case has an interesting excerpt from the treatise Underhill on Landlord and Tenant (an even older treatise) which tells us that the landlord's intentions upon entering the property, and the way he goes about it are key in determining whether he breached a duty.

http://www.oscn.net/applications/osc...1+25+23+15+13+

Here's another oldie but goody from 1918 that goes a little further on abandonment and says that the intent of the occupant in leaving the premises is determinative. This is good (if this case is even still valid) because if your family member's intent upon leaving was to return, then the property probably won't be found to have been abandonded.

http://www.oscn.net/applications/osc...8+183+154+152+

-- there'll probably be statutory law that preempts this.

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Anyhow, that's some case law. That's not even close to being a thorough search of it, and there's even a good chance that much of it has been overruled or made obsolete by statute.

Best 'o luck to the family member!

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Her rent was paid she has a copy of the money order receipt with the date on it. The landlords (there are two) told her that they had a right to declare the abandoment due to the electricty being off for over 30 days and that it didn't matter if the rent was paid. She was 5 days late on her rent but it was within the grace period.

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When it rains it pours... but when the blessings come they overflow!

I sounds like the landlords overstepped the lines a bit, but if there was, in fact, no lease...they couldnhave terminated it with a 30 days notice, even though it sounds as though they didn't take this much time or go thru the proper steps.

While I am sympathetic to your sister, I own rent houses and am also sympathetic to the landlord. If one of my tenants let the utilities lapse, I would take steps to have them evicted immediately. As shown by the spoiled food and damage to the refrigerator, there can be serious damage to the property by having utilities turned off.

Sounds like all this could have been prevented by a simple phone call to the landlord explaining the situation and cleaning out a fridge.

Hope it all works out.

I just don't think there's enough info here to decide whether there was abandonment.

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I never sent an update on this subject. My sister sent a letter to both landlords stating that she wasn't responsible to pay for the moving, packing, storage costs since they didn't give her the legal time frame to remove her property. She also stated in the letter that she had already paid for all the damage and wasn't going to pay anymore since she had alot of property damage herself from their move of her property. She also sent along the Landlord Tenant Act and highlighted the abandoment sections as well as the OSCN documents on the previous similiar cases. It has been 9 months sent she sent the doucmentation and she says that they have never responded back since then.

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When it rains it pours... but when the blessings come they overflow!