Retaining security deposit due to unpaid utilities

[herschen]

Our landlord is a couple that lives in Seattle and have been planning to demolish the house and rebuild their "dream home" on the property. They kept the utilities in their name, but did not include the utilities with the rent. They simply sent us the bills each month. Originally, we had a problem with the pool leaking. In order to keep the pool at the proper level (so as to keep the filtration system working and not have a swamp), we had to put excessive amounts of water in the pool. When the water bill came, we deducted the amount on the bill due for the leaky pool. We informed them of this and they did not raise objections.

They told us about 2 months ago that we had to move out within 6 weeks because they would be demolishing the house. I looked up the law and informed them that they actually had to give us 120 days notice to move out, and that we could move out whenever we wanted, so long as we told them of the date we planned to move out. At that point, they would have 14 days to either return the security deposit or give us a written estimate of why they were withholding any amount of the security deposit (and return to us the amount owed). They told us that as long as we gave them 28 days notice (and did not "bail" on them), we would get our full deposit back.

Now we received a letter from them that informs us that not only do we not get our security deposit back, we also owe them money for utility bills that we did not pay them for (which I might add is highly inflated)

I want to know if it is legal for the landlord to keep the utility bills in his/her name and not include it in the monthly rent due. Furthermore, I would like to know if a statute of limitations exists on unpaid bills. We have a lot of violations that they have committed, but the main concern is whether or not they can legitimately retain our security deposit for money that we did not pay them, that is not documented, and has nothing to do with the rent.

 

[Lill]

First off...read up on the laws for your state.

http://www.wsba.org/media/publications/pamphlets/landlord-tenant.htm

The landlord actually only had to give you 20 days notice to move.

Were you on a lease? Had you been paying the unility bills all along and now decided not to pay whats due? If you owe for them..then yes your liable to pay them and they can withhold the balance from your security.

The time to bring up violations is when you lived there...now is irrevelavent.

 

[herschen]

Thank you for your quick response. Actually, this was partially my mistake. It asks which state I am living in at the top of the page, but I guess it doesn't put that in the post. I live in Hawaii, but my landlord lives in Seattle. We have been paying the utilities all along, we were on a 6-month lease and now we are paying rent month-to-month. As stated above, we only deducted a small portion from our water bill due to the leaky pool.

Please clarify why these violations--which I have not explained--are irrelevant. They did not provide us with receipts for payment of rent, they did not give us ample time to move out, they did not have an agent on the island to deal with problems that we had with our house, nor did they fix the plumbing problems that we had. So to recap: we were essentially illegally evicted from a house where there were multitudes of violations and not returned our security deposit (which in the state of Hawaii only can be kept for damages, cleaning costs, and for failure to pay rent). The reason that most utilities are either included in the rent or paid separately by the renters is because of this exact reason. The owners cannot deduct from our security deposit for utilities in their name. We have receipts and bank statements that show that we have been paying for the utilities. Again, please clarify how this is irrelevant. Thank you.

p.s. my question still has not been answered: In Hawaii, is it legal for an owner to keep utilities in their name (and not included with the rent), and send us the bill? And is it legal for them to claim we owe them for utilities in their name? Thank you.

 

[herschen]

and Lil, please lose the attitude. You obviously did not read my post as it explained quite clearly that we have been paying the bills all along. when you give nasty advice with horrible grammatical errors, it insults all legal professionals world wide.