QUESTION
Is my one-year house lease still valid even though the landlord signature was forged to allow a sublet
Asked on Nov 05th, 2018 on Contracts - Florida
More details to this question:
Me and my wife signed a one-year lease on a 3-bedroom house in April of 2018... my mother-in-law came for a visit and over-extended her stay, and took it upon herself to move herself in and now we want her out. I contacted the family member who arranged our lease thru the private owner of the house we're renting to tell her about the situation and she said that the lease was never in our names and invalid because she forged the private owner signature on a fake lease to rent it to us at a higher price then what she was paying... we have the only copy of our lease with the fake owner's signature on it.... in fact the family member who made these Arrangements knew all along that our mother-in-law was going to come visit and stay and said that we should work it out with her which we do not want to at all... we want her out!!! she has not contributed no money whatsoever towards the rent utilities food or nothing since April.. .. am I screwed or is the least that I have legal in eviction
1 ANSWER
Your question is complicated and may depend on who you're fighting with. If the owner was trying to get you out, and your only basis for occupancy was a forged sublease, you would probably lose. The only chance I can see is if you could show that the owner knew or should have known about the forged sublease and went along with it, thereby ratifying it. This is a longshot. However, if you ask the owner to approve the sublease now, he/she/it could do so and it would be as if he/she/it had signed it originally, with no forgery. Your mother-in-law, the forger, can't claim any benefits from the forgery. Even if you don't get the owner to ratify the sublease, your mother-in-law can't resist eviction by attacking her own forgery - the fake won't give you any rights against the owner, whose signature was forged, but it is valid as against your mother-in-law.
Answered on Nov 06th, 2018 at 2:48 PM