Temporary Order of Protection against LL?

[JenniferLynn]

First of all, I'm in Texas. I know that can make huge differences.

I'm seriously considering going down to file a temporary protective order against my soon to be ex-LL. We moved into the residence in November of 2007. It was left in total dissaray from the previous tenants. (They left in the middle of the night with no warning.. I understand why now!) When we signed the lease it was for a month to month lease with the option of paying $3k to start a contract to buy the residence. At the time my husband and I did not have the money to pay for first and last months rent, deposit, and the down payment. The LL took $350 off our deposit because of the condition of the residence, and the cleaning that needed to be done. My husband and I and our son were moving from a town about 30 miles away, and with only one vehicle and him having long work hours, my parents were the ones who actually came in to clean the residence. Dad ended up mopping all the walls and floors with bleach, and there was furniture and trash everywhere. As it turns out, there were about 4 families living in the residence at the same time prior to our lease. This was not a big deal. The house is over 100 years old, and we were in love with it! Everything was fine until the end of January.

At the end of January we got our tax return, and had already decided we would use this money to pay for the down payment on the house, as well as start on some of the renovations. At that time we were informed by the LL that he was going through a divorce, and instead of the $3k, he wanted $9k down to deal with his divorce costs. Well right then, we knew that wasn't happening. So we decided we'd try for a mortgage through the bank, which proved impossible. With the way the market is, the age of the house, and the amount being asked for the residence ($18k total), the area banks told us that it wouldn't happen for anyone who couldn't secure the loan as a personal loan. So we pretty much gave up on the idea of buying it, and intended to rent until we found a newer house that would cost more, but in the end would be more feasible. In February LL decided to list the house with a Real-Estate agent, and also upped the price to $25k. (To this day, the house was only shown twice.)

In May we had a close family friend pass, and the family was willing to pay for this house out-right for us, but not for the $25k. It isn't worth that much. But they were willing to give the LL $18k in cash for the house. LL stated that he couldn't do lower than $22k because of the Realtor fees, but in September the contract would be up, and then the price would go back to $18k. No problem. We could all wait it out. (Or so we thought!)

In February we found out that I was expecting our second child. In July I had some blood work come back abnormal, and long story short.. lead poisoning. After not much time on Google, we found out about the Lead Exposure Act. A formal complaint was filed. Though it really wouldn't have mattered if we filed a complain, because the Dr. was required to report incidents to the State. We also got information about at that time about Tenants Rights, and found out that all the thing sin our lease that we were required to fix on our own, really wern't our responsibility, and the LL was violating tons of codes! That's when things really started getting sticky.

There is now a federal investigation going on against the LL due to the lead paint problems. He's pretty POed about that, but I have no sympathy. He used to be the fire-chief here in town, and he was also the one who knew and enforced codes. I'm pretty darned POed that he didn't bother to even mention the lead paint thing. This put my entire family at risk!

And it come sot the protection order. The LL is now trying to exclude myself and our son from anything having to do with the lead paint because I didn't sign the newest lease, however, I've already tlaked to an attorney and there's something about a writ of inhabitance, and the fact that I signed the origional lease, so he can't do this. He's also started calling daily, sometimes in excess of 15 times a day informing us that he is going to enter the residence as he wishes. My husband works long hours at work, and the LL likes to show up when he knows my husband isn't here. He's come up on the porch and gotten in my face telling me that he will enter the residence any time he wishes. I'm now 34 weeks pregnant, very high risk. I'm not supposed to be out of bed, and this man really does scare me. He had the audacity to tell me that his house was more important that my life and the life on my unborn child.

We got a letter in the mail about 2 weeks ago from the landlord saying that he had sold the house and it would no longer be his on September 9th, however, today we got the actual certified letter about the house being sold. If I'm not mistake, we have 30 days from the time we receive the certified letter to leave the premises. Being out by September 9th is no issue. We close on our new house on the 29th of August, and will be out before the house isn't his.

The LL called twice this morning saying he wanted to come into the residence to take pictures. He knows my husbands regular 40 hour schedule, and also knows that over-time is a given. But he wants to come when my husband won't be here. MY husband told him that no it would not be possible, and we would be out before the new owners take possession of the home. If he wants pictures then, no problem, but I could have this baby literally anytime now, and he was not welcome anywhere near here when I was home alone. The LL wasn't happy but pretty much gave up and then hung up on my husband. The LL has already made disparaging comments about me to my husband, even resorting to calling me a b*tch and telling my husband nothing about me mattered because I wasn't on the latest lease! About 5 minutes later he called back to tell us that he would be here everyday and bring the police if he had to.

I'm a little afraid abotu him and the police. This town has a population of about 2000 to 3000 people, and there are only 3 police officers. Because LL was the prior fire-chief, he's on a very buddy-buddy term with the Police Chief (who we recently found out will be kicked off the force at the next town meeting because enough peopel have signed a petition to have him removed). My father suggested calling county or state police. But tonight I had an epiphany about filing a temporary restraining/protective order. The LL has already been told that we will be out in a week, and I don't see why he would have any need to come in and take pictures of a house full of boxes.

Any advice on this? Would I be able to get a temporary order restraining him from the residence until we were out? A few weeks ago when he tried to come in without warning and me home alone my Mom also called to schedule a time when he could come when my husband would be home, and the LL went off on her too. I know she's not an impartial witness, but it's someone else at least who he's been beligerant to. Beyond everything else, we've been given notice to leave by September 9th, so it seems like he should back off until then. The letter was typed out by the LL himself, no legal or official forms, and we're pretty sure he's lying about the house being sold, anyway. The house is still listed on every website with no mention of a sale or contract, the Realtor signs are still in the yard, and the lock box is still on the front door. Any ideas?

Realtor signs aren't removed until well after the sale has closed. I had one in my front yard until a month after I owned the house. Ignore those. Realtors won't take them down until they are darn sure the house has completed a sale and they have their money for it.

Why can't he come in and take pictures? What's the big deal? It seems the 2 of you are in an antogonistic struggle. Have your dad come over and inform the LL that he can come and take his pictures on that day. You stay in bed until the whole thing is over. I see no reason not to allow his photographs.

The state of TX has no statute that says a LL must give you notice before entering the premises, unlike other states. There is no requirement for a 24 hour written notice. If there were a statute on entry, you would have to allow reasonable entry to the residence, or you could be evicted. He could not abuse the right of access, or you would have a case against him. He has only shown the house 2x since February. That wouldn't be abuse of entry. If you'd just let him in, the whole thing could be over in 1/2 hour. Just don't be alone when he comes and don't speak to him. Almost every state allows the LL the right of entry for an inspection. Let him in to do it.

The state of the house before you moved in is immaterial. You accepted it in that condition and were compensated for the work. The owner can change his mind on the price of the house since you have no written sales contract.

Your biggest problems seem to be lead, and some (unspecified) violations / repairs. Please tell us more about the violations/repairs and the codes. You should have received a lead pamphlet and signed a lead statement when you signed your lease. Did you? These are REQUIRED. If he had no knowledge or reports about the lead, it should have been listed on this statement. Do you have any peeling paint or oxidized paint (turning to dust) in the house? Stay away from these areas especially!!! Encapsulated lead paint is safe (under new paint). Lead paint that is exposed is dangerous. But it may not be in the paint. It could be in the water (old pipes were soldiered together with lead). Has testing been done on the house to see where the lead is? Get the health department or building inspector to do these ASAP. You need to know where that lead is. It may not be safe to live there. I hope no permanent damage has been done to you.

It would be difficult to get a protection order against the LL. Unless you can prove he directly threatened your life or a member of your family's, it probably won't be granted. He owns that house. You must deal with him beacuse he's your LL. That would make this very difficult. Allow his photos as above, don't talk to the man anymore, avoid stress, and stay healthy for your child's sake. Good luck.

Why can't he come in and take pictures? What's the big deal? It seems the 2 of you are in an antogonistic struggle. Have your dad come over and inform the LL that he can come and take his pictures on that day. You stay in bed until the whole thing is over. I see no reason not to allow his photographs.

The thing here is that currently there are boxes and furniture piled from floor to ceiling in every room except one bedroom and one bathroom. It seems pointless for him to come take picture of our boxes.


The state of TX has no statute that says a LL must give you notice before entering the premises, unlike other states. There is no requirement for a 24 hour written notice. If there were a statute on entry, you would have to allow reasonable entry to the residence, or you could be evicted. He could not abuse the right of access, or you would have a case against him. He has only shown the house 2x since February. That wouldn't be abuse of entry. If you'd just let him in, the whole thing could be over in 1/2 hour. Just don't be alone when he comes and don't speak to him. Almost every state allows the LL the right of entry for an inspection. Let him in to do it.

The house was shown 3 times. I'm not sure if I wrote it wrong or what. However, the Realtor ended up losing the key to the house! They have tried to show the home since then, however could not gain access. And then I get a phone call.. When the Realtor put the key back into the lock box after showing the home, she evidently didn't close the slot that holds the key to where it locked down into place. The porch to the house is concrete and connected to the house, so if it simply fell out, it should have been sitting there in front of the door. They key was gone. This is a small town and people are constantly coming to the door asking to use the phone, offering to mow the lawn or trim trees for some extra cash, and then people coming up asking for previous residents, who we know have extensive criminal backgrounds. Anyone could have come up during that time and taken the key. We requested in writing that the LL re-key or change the locks, to which he refused.


The state of the house before you moved in is immaterial. You accepted it in that condition and were compensated for the work. The owner can change his mind on the price of the house since you have no written sales contract.

Does it matter that the price and option to buy was written into the lease? And we won't really be compensated for having to clean/have cleaned the house before moving in. The LL already informed us that he does not believe he is responsible for paying us back a security deposit, since we only paid $100, and the other $350 that was normally required was waived due to the condition of the house. In the end, it cost us more than $350 for the house to be cleaned. It took about 4 days for the house to be done, during which time we ended up having to stay at our previous residence beyond our lease terms there. Normally it should have taken a day or possibly two to clean a house before a move-in, but the previous tenants litterally left everything but most of their clothes. It came down to packing up many of their possessions, carting off countless loads of trash and broken furniture, cleaning a kitchen that was left with dirty dishes in the sink for a month, food in the fridge and freezer. Along with that we paid for all cleaning supplies. Our previous LL agreed to let us stay over if we paid half a month's rent, which was $800, so we paid the $400. I would not expect to get compensated for the full security deposit if we left the house in a mess, but we're not.


Your biggest problems seem to be lead, and some (unspecified) violations / repairs. Please tell us more about the violations/repairs and the codes. You should have received a lead pamphlet and signed a lead statement when you signed your lease. Did you? These are REQUIRED. If he had no knowledge or reports about the lead, it should have been listed on this statement. Do you have any peeling paint or oxidized paint (turning to dust) in the house? Stay away from these areas especially!!! Encapsulated lead paint is safe (under new paint). Lead paint that is exposed is dangerous. But it may not be in the paint. It could be in the water (old pipes were soldiered together with lead). Has testing been done on the house to see where the lead is? Get the health department or building inspector to do these ASAP. You need to know where that lead is. It may not be safe to live there. I hope no permanent damage has been done to you.

Oh that's loaded! We were never given any information (paper, pamphlet, word of mouth, nothing), and after asking some of the older residents here in town, we found out this has been an issue before, and our LL did know about the Lead Exposure Act, as he'd been the one to over-see some of the clean-up when he was Fire Chief here (b.c the FC is also the code enforcer in this town Of course the EPA was head over all of it, but the local authorities were involved). When the EPA contacted LL, he went ballistic on us. Calling as much as 16+ times a day, ect. There is peeling paint, and also paint turning to dust around many of the doors, windowsills, door jams, and baseboards. It wasn't noticeable until the house was cleaned. The house is over 100 years old, and all those things are origonal to the house. In some areas, such as one bathroom, up to 9 layers of paint can be counted. I would not hesitate to believe that at least eh bottom layers date back to the early 70's, before lead paint was out-lawed, if they're not older. As for other repairs.. well that's loaded too. As of the end of July when the last certified letter was sent, we were requesting: The kitchen sink to be fixed. There used to be a dishwasher in the residence, and there was a T shaped pipe leading from the water pipes under the sink. On July 17th (I took pictures with the date recorded) after doing dishes I pulled the plug to drain the water. All of the water from the sink came rushing out from under the bottom cabinets. I got down on the floor with a flashlight to look under the cabinets, and found an old plastic bottlecap with remnants of tape stuck to it. That was when we found that evidently when the dish-washer was taken out, the bottlecap and tape was what were used to close off that pipe! There were no signs of a proper plumbing fitting. This happened the day after the sink in the laundry-room started filling with water and this sandy/gritty material when the washer was run. We called to tell LL about the laundry room, and he claimed that he was busy, and since it wasn't an emergency, he would check it out when he had time and would be in the area. That was also the letter asking for the doors to be re-keyed. LL wouldn't answer his phone or return calls for a week after that, and then simply left it that we could fix everything if we wanted at our expense, but he was getting rid of the house 'one way or another' so he didn't really care to fix anything.


It would be difficult to get a protection order against the LL. Unless you can prove he directly threatened your life or a member of your family's, it probably won't be granted. He owns that house. You must deal with him beacuse he's your LL. That would make this very difficult. Allow his photos as above, don't talk to the man anymore, avoid stress, and stay healthy for your child's sake. Good luck.

He told me over the phone that his house was more important than my life of the life of my unborn child. I'm unsure if the courts would consider this a threat. Oh, and I did ask our Realtor if she could check and see if this house was sold, or if a contract was on it. She checked in their system and they show the house as being still for sale, with nothing pending against it. According to LL a contract was started on August 9th, and the house sale would be finalized through the title company on September 9th. I don't know if it means anything that it isn't in the computer system of the same Realty company or not. But if it does end up that he is lying about the house being sold, it's at least immoral, if not illegal that he sent us official notice (certified mail) of the sale. He could ask us to leave at any time, as we only have a month to month lease.. and we def. want to leave and are. But could he be in trouble for faking a reason to try and get rid of us?

Whether you think it is pointless or not doesn't matter. It is his right to enter for an inspection. Allow him this.

Showing it 3 times in 6 months is not abuse of the right of entry. (To this day, the house was only shown twice.- Your words.) Did you send him written notice to re-key the place since the realtor (his agent) lost the key? Did you mention that he would be responsible if someone used that key to gain access to your house and possessions? That would have been the correct procedure, followed by repair and deduct if he refused.

You attempted to excercise your option to buy in January. The price had not changed then, only the down payment. (Was the down payment written into your sales contract?) You could not obtain financing. When you couldn't close on your purchase option, the LL put the house on the market. Your sale did not go through. Did the LL agree to continue your option to buy after the sale failed?

You were, in fact, compensated for the state of the house when you moved in. Because of it's condition, you had a reduced deposit. You did not have to come up with a full deposit and did not have to give that money to the LL. That money stayed in your bank and presumedly collected interest for you, not he LL, throughout your tenancy. You only needed to pay $100 instead of $450 to him as a deposit. $350 for only 4 days work is a fair wage. You accepted the house in that condition (you could have refused to rent it in that state) and choose to stay over at your other residence. That residence cost you $400 for that period, but you saved $350 by cleaning it yourself. So in the end, this only cost you $50. You agreed to pay for the cleaning supplies when you agreed to this job. Sorry, but no compensation is due you for this.

The number of paint layers doesn't matter if they are intact. (You can't remove old paint underneath, you can only paint over it again. It is the peeling paint you need to be concerned about. The oxidizing paint can be encapsulated by simply painting over it to seal it with special paint. It is the paint that is not intact that is the most troublesome. Your heath department surely must know of these hazards. I can't say what the penalty is there for failing to follow the lead paint regualtions, but I'm sure it are steep. I always follow this rule whenever renting a unit, even if the tenant attempts to refuse these materials. (They get them anyway.) All units are repainted from top to bottom as soon as I buy them to encapsulate any lead paint. Any old building will have lead paint under those layers somewhere since ALL paint from back then had lead. The trick is to keep it under raps at all times. That protects all occupants from these hazards.

A bottle cap for a plumbing fitting! Wow! What a dolt! That pipe could have been easily sealed with a proper cap for under $5 and would never have leaked. This was an easy fix. Whoever removed the DW did a lousy job. Sounds like a partial clog in the laundry line for the back-up into the sink there. When he didn't respond to the certified letter, you could simple have followed Texas Property Codes 92.056 and 92.0561 to repair and deduct these problems after about 30 days. You could have repaired the problems correctly yourself, and deducted the amounts for supplies from the next rent by sending him copies of the receipts for them. That would have solved these problems according to your state law.

Sorry, but saying he cares more for the house than you is not a threat. He did not openly threaten to harm you or anyone in your household. Without an overt direct threat to you, there is no way to obtain a restraining order. If he was still calling 16 times a day, you could get an order to cease and desist doing that, but a judge will not order a TRO without an actual threat.

The sale may not be in the realtor's computer for several reasons. He could have by-passed his own agent and signed a contract with the buyer's agent from another company (to try and skip paying her commission). He could be doing a private sale directly to a buyer (not using any agents). He could be doing a FSBO, where he takes back the mortgage himself (not using a bank - he agrees to allow the buyer to make payments directly to him by acting as his own bank). There is no way to know for sure until a closing occurs. When it is closed and the new deed is drawn and registered with the county or city government, it would go on the auditor's website.

It really doesn't matter. If you are now on a month to month agreement, he doesn't need to give you a reason to leave at all. (So any lie wouldn't matter.) He only needs to give you one month's notice to get out. This notice need only be written by the LL, and there is no legal form for it. You need to be out of the unit and return the keys by the 30th day. I hope your birth will go well and the child will be healthy. Good luck.