QUESTION
Recently moved from rental property. Landlord kept deposit for light bill and removal of some furniture. We did however have a camper used for storage
Asked on Jul 05th, 2017 on Landlord and Tenant Law - Virginia
More details to this question:
Camper contained sentimental items and expensive boating aces sores and three boat motors. She will not allow us to retrieve anything. I'm at a loss and devastated. We were good loyal tenants for almost 7 years. Was never short or late on rent.
1 ANSWER
1 Award
The landlord can not steal your things. Even if you did owe them money, which it sounds like you do not. There may be different ways of handling this, but I think the easiest would be to file in your local General District Court a Warrant in Detinue, which is basically a fancy way of saying "give me back my stuff." The clerk at the court can provide you with the form to fill out or you can access it on the state court website here: http://www.courts.state.va.us/forms/district/dc404.pdf. You can file this in Small Claims Court, so you don't even need a lawyer. You will need to list the value of each item, so that if you don't get your things back or if they have been disposed of or destroyed the judge can order the landlord to pay you the value of them instead.
Answered on Jul 09th, 2017 at 6:55 PM