I am a 22 year old full time college student. I work part time and rent a room with my 20 year old boyfriend from MY OWN GRANDMOTHER! My boyfriend and I are very curious if we are entitled to the same rights as any other tenants. She requests 400 monthly plus we pay our own separate food, clothing, neccesities etc. We pay in 100 weekly incriments. She is a very difficult person to live with, and we are very tolerant of her greediness, but we are nervous and living on edge. We feel a though she makes us pay the 400 in weekly payments so that she may kick us out at her convenience. We are very clean, quiet and hardly ever home, so other than her wanting someone in our spot giving her more money, there would be no true reason for her to have us removed. Please help me, does she have the right to just kick us out even though we pay?
Submitted by Anonymous on Fri, 08/12/2011 - 21:58
Eggshells
Anon, this was is a tricky situation. There are some points you don't make exactly clear that it would be helpful to know. For example, did you sign a lease with your grandmother when you agreed to rent/share her apartment? For that matter also, it isn't clear whether your grandmother resides in the same unit as you or whether you just rent a room in a multifamily that she owns and occupies a separate unit in.
My first reaction was to think that because your grandmother is also a resident with in the same apartment (I'm assuming this is true, if not then what follows will apply even more strongly), that there might be some exceptions for her to more easily evict you and your boyfriend should it come to that. After considering it further however I think that there are good grounds to think that you and the boyfriend should have all the protections normally afforded tenants who pay rent to a landlord. What this means among other things is that your grandmother will have to go through all the procedures any landlord would to evict you. In other words, she must first issue you a notice to quit the premises, wait (under normal circumstances) 30 days to serve a summons/complaint, which will then establish a trial date for a judge to review the matter...and this is just the begining of the summary process. If you take advantage of all the procedural rights guaranteed in this kind action, including appeal, the entire matter can last 2-3 months, during which time you would be allowed to continue to occupy the residence you have been paying rent for, assuming you continue to pay rent. The upshot of this is that even though she can end your tenancy whenever she wants (assuming you don't have a lease, if you do then her ability to do this is even more limited), in order to do so she will have to follow all the rules anyone does who rents property.
There is a possible qualification to all this given that you've been paying in weekly installments. This might mean the arrangement is more similar to a boarding house, which would entail a slightly different legal analysis. You would still be entitled to some protections similar to those outlined above even in that case, though. That said, your main considerations here are non-legal: do you want to potentially alienate for a long time a relative over a short term, close quarter living situation by forcing him/her to go through the legal system to have you evicted from their own residence? Keep in mind that however difficult she may be to live w/, you're not likely to find any place for $400/month in most major MA towns and cities and she may see this as doing a favor for a grand-kid.