Q. I rented an apartment in Chicago to a family who apparently had domestic problems. The husband may be in jail for abuse, and the wife has apparently taken the children and left the apartment.
They left all of their property in the apartment, and while they haven’t paid rent for the past month, I don’t know how to handle this situation. Can you provide some guidance?
A. You are probably dealing with a classic case of abandonment. It is entirely possible that the wife has moved to another home where her husband cannot find her or harm her further. Unfortunately, such a move also involves not disclosing the location to you or to others.
Under the City of Chicago Residential Landlord and Tenant Ordinance, you have the right, under certain circumstances, to use the abandonment remedies, and not file an eviction suit.
Abandonment occurs in three ways. The first is that you are provided with actual notice from the tenant that the apartment is being abandoned.
The second is that all persons entitled to occupy the apartment have been absent from the unit for 31 days, or one rental period, if the rental period is less than a month, provided the personal property has been removed from the apartment and the tenant has not paid the rent for that period.
The third set of qualifications are the ones that probably would govern your situation. The apartment will be considered abandoned if all persons entitled to occupy the apartment are absent from the unit for 32 days and the rent for that period is unpaid. In that case, it does not matter whether the property has been removed from the apartment.
Regardless of whether the tenant’s case fits into any of these situations, if anyone entitled to occupy the apartment gives you a written notice that they still intend to occupy the apartment, you cannot consider the apartment abandoned. You have a right to assume that the apartment has been abandoned, though, if you have not received such a notice from the tenant, the tenant has been gone for at least 32 days and the rent has not been paid for that period.
Once the time periods have run, you have a right to consider the apartment abandoned. However, you still cannot simply throw out the tenant’s property. Rather, for an additional seven days after the apartment is considered abandoned, you must either store the tenant’s property in the apartment, or you may remove it and store it for an additional seven days. In that way, you can make the apartment available to a replacement tenant. When the storage period ends, you have a right to dispose of the property.
You should note that you do not have to store perishable items for that one-week period. Rather, you have the right immediately to remove valueless property or property subject to spoilage.
As in the case of all other lease defaults, you must make a good-faith effort to re-rent the apartment at a fair market rental rate. Technically, the tenant is responsible for the rent until the apartment is rented, and is responsible to make up the difference between the rent he or she was paying and the rent you were able to charge to the replacement tenant. The tenant is also responsible for your costs of re-renting the apartment, including advertising costs and brokerage commissions.
As a practical matter, if you are unable to find the tenants who abandoned the apartment, you will be unable to sue them for the past-due rent and the expenses you incur in re-renting the apartment. In order to collect from your tenants, you must be able to serve them with a summons in a lawsuit. If you cannot find them, you have no way to serve them with the summons and, therefore, little chance of collecting your damages.
If that is the case, you should focus on considering their apartment abandoned and re-renting it as soon as possible. That is your best opportunity to minimize your damages under these circumstances.
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Robert A. Boron, a Chicago attorney who specializes in leasing matters, writes about landlord and tenant issues for the Tribune. Questions to him can be addressed to Rental Q&A, Real Estate section, Chicago Tribune, 435 N. Michigan Ave., 4th floor, Chicago, IL 60611. He also can be reached by e-mail at realestate@tribune.com. Sorry, but he cannot make personal replies.
