As a Property Manager we have helped owners facilitate evictions for many years and thought we had seen it all; until that is we had to process an eviction for a home in Buckeye at the White Tank Justice Courts! BEWARE!!!
In all of the evictions we have processed over the years this is the first for us! We worked hand in hand with the property owner to complete an eviction with a problematic habitual late payer. All of the necessary steps were taken, the letter of law followed to evict the tenant out when September 2014 rent was not paid. The eviction proceedings were filed September 17th and the pretrial was set for September 23, 2014. The tenant appeared in court at the pretrial on September 23rd and was in dispute of the amount owed, not that the September 2014 rent was not paid. It is not uncommon, that if the tenant does not plead guilty a trial date will be set. In this case our trial date was set for September 30, at that time the tenant produced a copy an uncleared payment that she claimed was sent in to to pay down the past due balance, again admitting that she had not paid September rent. The judge granted the tenant a 7 day continuous for tenant to provide the additional payment was accepted and cashed. All parties returned to court on October 7th, at which time the tenant produced fraudulent proof that the payment was cashed. The judge gave the owner two options: take another 7 day continuous to dispute the payment was cashed OR accept a dramatically reduced judgment. We opted for the judgment as the continuous would have basically given the tenant the month of October in additional to September before a lock out could have been completed. It is unfortunate the judge did not see both sides of the case, be it the home owner paying the mortgage as they were drawn in by the tenants lies, sad, sob story and ultimate fraud. This again shows the importance of screening your tenants!!
