can my tenant pay half of the rent now and the other half later on?

By now, the plumbing should be fixed and the tenant should pay what she or he owes you. Have a registered process server deliver a legal 3-day-notice-to-pay-rent-or-quit. If you or a friend serve the notice and the tenant denies it, then it's your word against the tenant, and since the plaintiff has the burden-of-proof, ties go to the defendant. If you use a registered process server, there are a statute and cases that make it very difficult to disprove the testimony of the process server. The cost is less than $100.00 and is added to the judgment when you win. I urge you to hire an attorney with eviction experience. The law goes to great lengths to protect tenants against being wrongfully evicted from their homes. Judges are trained to look for the slightest mistake in filling out the forms and handling the procedure. Defense attorneys make up mistakes, and since the landlord bears the burden-of-proof, sometimes even a lawyer who makes no mistakes still loses one of these cases. An untrained person without experience doing evictions would be at a severe disadvantage. If you appreciate this free advice, please remember to refer me to any friends or acquaintances who need a lawyer. Referrals are still our best source of new business. Do you have a revocable living trust to protect your heirs against probate? Probate takes forever, is expensive, and is annoying. Do your family a favor. Set up a trust, and put all your property, especially any real property, into the trust. Since it is revocable, you can change it, add to it, take property out of it, or even cancel it completely, at any time. We set up such trusts, provide a pour-over will as a back-up for any property that does not make it into the trust, provide you with blank durable powers of attorney for health care and financial decisions, in case you become incapable of making such decisions while still alive, and convey one piece of real property to the trust, usually the family home, for $1500.00. If you would like to hire me to do this, let me know, and I'll send you a list of the information I need.   Dana Sack