Former tenant and no 30 day notice

I have former tenants and they want their security deposit back plus back rent. They paid their rent on 6/1/08 as usual, by the 13th there were boxes appearing, by the 15th they were gone. Now they are sueing me saying they want their rent back for the last 15 days of the month and their security deposit. I am in California. I was under the assumption that 30 days notice was mandatory, and that not giving a notice you lost your deposit. I mean they stuck me with a 3150.00 townhouse with rent due in two weeks time. We were not getting along but they could have at least given a 30 day notice and cleaned the place before they left. One thing they left was a red wine stain measuring 2 sqft

Henry

HenryInSF@yahoo.com can you please e-mail me my response? Thanks!

They normally should have given 30 days notice if they were paying monthly--you need not reimburse them and in fact may sue them in small claims if need be.

The last answer is not necessarily true. While they were required to give you 30 days notice to vacate and pay the rent for that period, you were required to do an itemized deposit statement and send it to them within 21 days of the date they vacated the premises. Did you send this statement? Did you send receipts for any amount of repairs over $125? Even if they owed back rent, you must do this statement to say that is why you kept the deposit. You should have send a statement that says they failed to give written notice and that the deposit was being lkept for the notice period when you were unable to re-rent the house. If you didn't send this, you may not keep their deposit and may even be liable for the deposit plus 2x the deposit in penalties. I hope you followed CA state law on the return of the deposit statement because CA courts are very tenant-friendly.