You’ve given a 3-day Notice to Vacate to your tenant, you’ve drawn a line in the sand and you’ve even given them an opportunity to pack their things and leave before you’re forced to file a lawsuit for Eviction.
The big question is – can you accept money from your Tenant after you deliver a Notice to Vacate?
You definitely can.
But I don’t recommend that you put anything in writing. I’ve actually seen landlords get themselves in a lot of trouble drafting up a new agreement and then presenting it to their tenant. When people try to do things they are not familiar with, they usually get themselves into more trouble.
So, I don’t recommend putting anything in writing at this point. Instead, you can make some kind of oral offer of settlement.
For example, “Pay all of the rent, pay all of the late fees, pay anything else that’s outstanding. I won’t file anything, but only if you pay this specific amount by this specific date. If that happens, I will withdraw my intent to sue you.”
You haven’t actually filed anything yet, so you’re relatively safe negotiating a settlement. The controlling document in question is still the lease, which requires for the payment of rent and requires the payment of late fees. If you rush to put something new into writing, you might lock yourself into some additional agreement, or you might give your tenant a way out of the obligation to pay rent at all.
The most likely thing to happen to you if you draft a new written agreement with your Tenant is that you might also invalidate your notice to vacate.
In the law, the only thing that’ll alter a written agreement is some other written agreement. Unfortunately, landlords needlessly get themselves into trouble with this kind of thing all the time.
If you want to wheel and deal, go ahead, but do it off of the record. Don’t do it in writing. That means no text or email. Even something scribbled on a piece of paper is going to constitute a writing, which could alter your agreement and could put your entire Lease in jeopardy.
If you’re going to try to work things out with your Tenant, which is genuinely something we recommend, make it by word-of-mouth. If your Tenant complies, you have the option to say, “Alright, we’re back on track,” and the Lease continues as before.
But if they don’t come through as agreed, you have no paper trail that could later come and take you by surprise if a Tenant tries to introduce evidence of settlement at a future trial. You also do not have some document out there with the potential to drastically change the terms of your Lease.
