What to do if we fired an employee who was getting paid every week and living in our house for free but she won’t leave the premises?
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What to do if we fired an employee who was getting paid every week and living in our house for free but she won’t leave the premises?
We talked to the clerk’s office but they said they only do evictions for monetary reasons and not under our circumstances; we would have to figure out what to forms to use or hire a lawyer
Asked on June 11, 2012 under Employment Labor Law, Florida
Answers:
SJZ, Member, New York Bar / FreeAdvice Contributing Attorney
Answered 12 years ago | Contributor
If the employee received living space as part of her compensation, then this *is* a nonpayment of rent situation in essence--the employee is no longer providing the consideration (employment) for rent. It could also be viewed as breach of lease--the condition of living there was continued employment, but employment is no longer continuing. You should be able to file an eviction action as you could for any other valid ground--e.g. nonpayment of monetary rent; breach of lease. Also, if there was no written lease, only an oral one, she was a month to month tenant and you could give her 30 days notice at any time terminating her tenancy and evict her on those grounds.
It is therefore unclear why the clerk's office said what they did: the courts regularly handle evictions for many grounds, not all of which are failure to pay monetary rent. You clearly have one or more good grounds to evict.
All that said, fighting with the clerk's office is rarely a winning proposition: best would be to hire a local attorney with experience in landlord-tenant matters in this court, who will best know how to move it through the system.
Good luck.
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