Category Archives: Wendy Welch

Occupied: Day 46

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So I can’t write in detail about the Dec. 22 eviction court date because the dude got Legal Aid, and astonishingly enough, this introduced some hilarity to events as well as cemented a final date of Jan. 5.

I respect and support Legal Aid. It’s not my suggestion that Legal Aid is to be laughed at; they do amazing work for important reasons. So let me explain just one thing about the day in court, and we will save the other funny stories for after the ruling has been made (Jan. 5).

The Legal Aid lawyer sent (on the Thursday before the Monday court date) a demand something called a Bill of Particulars. The bill asked seven questions, requiring documents for each.

My lawyer said this was highly unusual for an eviction, and since three weeks is the standard response time, it could be seen as a stall tactic to keep the dude in housing for another month while they thought of something else. I have started looking up some of the ways Legal Aid plans its strategies. There’s not a lot blatantly available on the Net, but a few people who have dealt with them in good faith have suggested that stalling and draining the coffers of the evicting party seem to be common approaches.

So my lawyer walked into the courtroom prepared to tell the judge that we would reply to the bill within two working days, because this had dragged out long enough. I assured him I could pull together all the documentation for the seven questions within that time, the bulldozers in my front yard notwithstanding.

(We had a plumbing issue: tree roots in the pipes. Not a hard fix, but an immediate need, and hence the guys showed up the same morning I was prepping for court.) My friend Amelia took pity on me and offered to take me back to her house so I wouldn’t have to time my bathroom visits with dashes to Walmart and the grocery store. And so we could print the documents there.

But my lawyer never even got a chance to say this. The judge had been very kind and prescient with the people before me, all of whom were having to own up to debts of a few thousand dollars, mostly from overdue rent. He joked with them about peanut butter balls and Christmas traditions and put them at ease even as he bonded them over for debt collection. He was great at reading people quickly, and matching energy.

So before my lawyer even spoke,the judge had sized us all up, and he said, “Right, my next available trial date is Jan. 5. So everyone will have their paperwork in by this Friday.”

A slight slump appeared in the shoulders of the Legal Aid lawyer. I almost felt sorry for her. This might be called getting hoisted by your own petard, when you try a tactic and it turns out creating difficulties for you.

Perhaps the judge knew that the court would be closed Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday. Which meant his “By Friday” meant “by 28 hours from now.”

Amelia and I bought booze, picked up a ream of paper, and went to her house. One hundred and twenty pages later, on the morning Dec. 23, with my friend driving the getaway car, we left copies with my attorney, filed one bundle with the court, and drove the third to Marion with a slip the Legal Aid office there could sign to show they had receive the documents on Tuesday.

Then we went to lunch.

The many funny stories that were part of this process, and the other funny things that happened in court, I will wait to tell you. My friend Laura was right: this is gonna make a helluva book.

Occupied: Day 40

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So my lawyer’s assistant called yesterday. We won’t be doing an eviction on Dec. 22. We will be getting an emergency order so I can go inside my own house.

Fascinating.

The guy changed the locks, so the last time I went out to see if he had allowed his dog and cats to cover the floor with feces again (at least I hope it was the dog and cats) we couldn’t get in. He passed us on the road in as we came out, so we went back. But he would not let us in.

This is illegal, but I cannot prosecute over it. That’s interesting to me. One feels the justice side should be errant toward the poorer party, but at a certain point does that mean there is no justice for the person who owns the property? Increasingly, at each point of his illegal actions, no recourse is available. It’s illegal, but so what?

We are not having an eviction on Dec. 22 because Legal Aid has gotten involved and filed several motions asking for documents of disclosure, information on the lease, etc. Each request is accompanied by a request for a separate court date. In other words, Legal Aid would like to cause the person asking for the eviction (me) to spend so much time and money that they drop it. This is a common Legal Aid strategy.

It is also one that most lawyers for those trying to make the eviction happen stand to benefit from financially. So that becomes tricky.

I am mistrustful of my lawyer for not disclosing that he would be away during a critical week of December. It feels like something he should have said when we started this journey. I am unhappy that he has offered several platitudes and reassurances, but not strategy. We have a call coming up. Let’s see what happens.

And I am miserably unhappy with the former friend who introduced me to the guy who is now occupying my property. I never once faulted her for introducing me to him, but recenltly I told her that she would need to testify, since she knew about the terms of the agreement (we made it on her front porch) and the circumstances of him taking up residence (we all drove out there together and inspected it and he asked her permission, basically, before moving out of her house).

Her exact words: “I can’t. I wouldn’t have anything to say.”

The most fascinating part of this process, when one steps back from the pain caused by it, is looking at the human decisions involved.

The guy has to be willing to harm people who did many things to help him. We gifted him a truck. We offered him a great work-for-rent deal. We accepted his need to flex his schedule when he notified us that he had appointments. OK, he’s willing to be a person who will do anything to get what he wants, and he has grown up in a world where this kind of behavior was normal, accepted, smart even.

My friend has decided “not to take sides.” She is watching me deal with a financial and emotional burden she has direct knowledge of, and holding herself disassociated from it all.

This feels like a worse betrayal than the guy, in all honesty. I expected better from her, if nothing else for his sake. Accountability may have to be an acquired skill, but can we get through life without it?

It feels unnecessary, this fight to take back what is mine. Had the guy fulfilled the terms of the agreement, he could have stayed. And it feels lonely. Friends don’t ask, and some friends turned out not to be. That part is hard.