Another in our ongoing series on legal issues. Please note that our legal issues series is based on Arizona law and may not be applicable in other States. Today's opinion is provided by the very talented and well regarded landlord/tenant attorney, Andy Hull. If you have questions, concerns or need counsel, please give Andy a call... he is a very helpful man. He can be reached at (602) 230-0088.
Today's topic is acceptance of partial rent payments. In the past, there was some grey area regarding this subject. However, things changed in late January 2009 when the Justices of the Peace in Arizona offered interpretations of the new rules of eviction in Arizona.
PARTIAL PAYMENTS:
Rule 13(a)(4) states that if a landlord accepts a partial payment without having the tenant sign a partial payment non-waiver form, the eviction will be dismissed. In the past, arguably the tenant had the obligation to come to court and raise that issue.
As a reminder, you cannot take any rent if the tenant is under any default notice (including for noise etc.) without having the tenant sign a non-waiver. Otherwise, your case will be dismissed.
If you accidentally accept the money, send it back. If it has been deposited, issue a new notice and wait until the first day of the next month to file the eviction.
We hope this information has been of value to you. If there is a topic of interest to you, please send an email to the Urban Team with your question and we'll do our best to secure an opinion.
Hope you had a great Memorial Day Weekend.
Gene Urban & Ron Urban
The Urban Team at Realty Executives
602-234-5777
