It was love at first sight. After you met The Special One, it was if the world transformed from dull black and white to the full spectrum of color. There was music in the air and the flowers were in bloom.
But that was then. This is now. And today, love at first sight has turned into “I can’t stand the sight of you.” Now what to do?
Sometimes the commitments we make in relationships outlast the relationship. Some of those commitments are called children, another one of those commitments is called a lease. If your Racine apartment lease has outlasted your relationship, here are some thoughts to keep in mind.
You may have stomped out the door mad months ago, but you could still be on the hook for rent even if you’re not living there. Then there’s the problem with retrieving your possessions, or if you’re the one remaining in the apartment, changing the locks to make sure your ex doesn’t come back and take something that doesn’t belong to them.
One thing to always keep in mind is that there is no substitute for playing nice and making the best of every situation. Life just has a way of putting you in the place where suddenly you need to gain a favor from the very person that three months ago, you set fire to their car.
Keeping those sentiments in mind, if you’re the person still remaining in the apartment and you want a lock change, more than likely, the landlord is going to charge you to do that. If you change the locks on your own, at least give the landlord a key. But if the landlord maintains a master key system, changing the locks and giving the landlord a key is not going to make the landlord happy. Also, know that even if you change the locks, if your ex is named in the lease, the landlord may have no other choice but to relinquish a key to your ex should your ex show up demanding access.
We already discussed that if you left and you’re on the lease, you might still have an obligation to pay rent. But in addition, who gets the security deposit once everyone has moved out?
Your landlord isn’t going to be drawn into a romantic dispute, or a platonic dispute either. The landlord is just going to issue a two party check to the both of you and leave it to the two of you to duke it out. Here’s a better way:
If both people send the landlord a simple written message instructing how much of the security deposit to refund to whom, many landlords will honor that. The two of you don’t even have to sign the same piece of paper. And maybe you don’t want to reveal your forwarding address to your ex anyway. But if each of you independently instructs the landlord in a largely similar fashion, many landlords, including Decker Properties, will honor that request and disburse the security deposit accordingly.