Is this a "just suck it up" situation? Or is frustration warranted?

I’d let it go since you are moving. If you were staying, that would be different. If you have a deposit you are wanting to get back, you really don’t want to rock the boat.

Let it go, it is not really worth worrying about. A couple weeks it won’t matter anyway.

Normally I’m all for fighting for your rights, but it’s a month, and it seems silly to strain a good relationship.

i agree it sucks and it would piss me off but i would be thinking i want to try to get the deposit back. that’s the downside of living in smaller house or building (as opposed to a large building managed by a company) – it’s easier for them to fuck with you and they will usually try to keep your security. in a big building, i’ve found the management company provides staff to do maintenance, and as long as you don’t damage something major they’re pretty cool

Clearly a suck it up situation. It’d be more effort and money to fight it at this point since you’re moving out short term.
They suck for doing this to you but you only have to do this a few more times and your done.

Now, if you don’t get your full deposit back after doing all this extra work I would be ticked. Obviously they are having some financial and family problems with a sick mom and a brother who is bailing on them. Take pictures of the trash piled up, pictures of your husband doing the work, pictures of the sink and your husband doing the work, and don’t erase one email. Document document document everything. If you have to take them to small claims for your deposit you want to have as much evidence as you can. Depending on the state you live in, the provision of the lease that says you have to do repairs under $50.00 may be void. It’s not YOUR property it’s theirs and it is their responsibility to fix ordinary ware and tear items. (At least in California.)

It is indeed a violation of your lease. However, the landlord seems to be looking on you as more than tenants, possibly as friends who will understand the problems the landlord is facing. I would do what Judi says and document everything. Then, if you don’t get your deposit back or are charged a “cleaning fee” you can document the lease violation and how much extra work you had to do that the landlord was supposed to have done by someone else.

So I say suck it up temporarily but document the situation.

Two weeks… is the hassle worth it? It’s a shame to finish on a sour note but you are the bigger people here, and it isn’t too long to cope. (Plus, how much snow are you expecting at this time of year?!)

Good luck with your move!

I’d say so far it’s unanimous. The landlord needs some help and considers you like friends. Do it with a smile and think of it as positive Karma.

Technically, your lease has been violated.

But let me ask you this: why is violating a lease considered a bad thing? A lease is a made-up piece of paper saying that you agree to X in exchange for Y. It seems to me like you’re still getting what you initially wanted—a place to live—but you’re not getting some extra perks that the landlord (foolishly) threw in.

So I’m with everyone else. Enjoy the opportunity to help someone who clearly has a lot of stuff going on, and be glad it’s not snow season.

and document

This has been going on for over a month actually, we just received the email last week. I just didn’t make a question about it then, maybe it would have been different.

@nikipedia I guess if we started not paying our rent, you’d feel the same way that violating a lease isn’t such a bad thing? Violation of leases should go both ways.

@casheroo: No, I’m saying that I don’t think violating a lease is, in and of itself, inherently bad. I think the cause behind the violation and the consequences of the violation should be take into consideration as well.

If you stopped paying your rent because your husband needed a trillion dollar surgery, that would be different from not paying your rent because you spent your rent money on hookers and blow. In the first case, I’d hope your landlord would be sympathetic and work something out with you instead of saying “a contract is a contract, the end.”

I guess I’m not a huge fan of the idea of contracts in general, and I think it’s a bummer that as a society we’ve had to resort to them. Of course, they’re a necessary evil—but anytime you can work around them, it seems like a good idea to me…

@nikipedia I guess my just knowing more of the situation, it’s hard to have sympathy, you know? When you hear children say that they wish their own mother would just die already…and she’s not even in that bad of shape..it’s rough to take anything they say seriously. I really love the old lady downstairs, she’s a great lady, and I barely know my landlord because she lives in Boston, but the extended family is a bunch of spoiled assholes who don’t want to care for their mother at all. My husband and I have extended a lot of help towards her, sometimes moreso than her own children. I think it’s just draining. We’re not even a part of their family, and I feel we tried harder.

I agree, contracts are a necessary evil.

If you’re in a month to month lease then changing the terms usually requires a 30 day notice (legally, again I am in California.)

@Judi No, our landlord refused to do a month to month, she only does yearly leases.

What a sucky situation. I agree that it’s best to follow Judi’s advice. If you were going to be there longer, I’d probably feel differently about it.

Then she had no right to change the terms mid lease, but… you already knew that.

Contracts are necessary in order to initiate, execute and complete any kind of mutually agreeable situation, whether a lease, employment contract, sale of property, insurance, money held on behalf of someone else, and on and on and on.

Contracts should be completed as promised and the most common recourse to breach of contract is the initiation of a lawsuit. I am not a lawyer but I would think that the landlord is in breach of contract.
On the other hand, no one is going to court for failure to take out the garbage for four weeks.

Contracts can be re-negotiated. Tell the landlord that her request, and it is not a requirement under the lease, is burdensome to you and your husband and completely unexpected. Ask her how she will compensate for adding these responsibilities to the leasing arrangement, like a rent reduction. She’ll either give you a few bucks off the rent or not answer you.

At that point, you either a)segregate your own trash and take it to the curb or b) accomodate her even though she’s got a lot of chutzpah to ask you to do this.

One of the other posters was correct about the landlord’s flexibility in retaining all or part of your security deposit. Have you paid the rent for May? If not, it is a perfect time to get the landlord to agree to some accomodation for these extra duties.

or you could just “suck it up” as you are moving anyway and take solace in the phrase that what goes around, comes around.

SRM

I agree with a few who say to deal with it since you’re so close to moving out and you’ll have enough stress with all that. I would however send an e-mail reply stating it feels unreasonable to both you and your husband to be expected to perform these chores when they were more of a convenience done by the brother before. There’s helping out someone who isn’t able and then there’s being taken advantage of, maybe your landlord got too comfortable with the niceties from before.

get the old lady to do it.

Call the Landlord’s Association Bureau