Story-time!

So, I don't know why weird stuff keeps happening to us, but it's story-time (again).

As you know, we moved in with mom because I had a baby and had to quit my job. In order to do this, sadly, we had to break our lease at the apartment we were renting. Let me preface my story with the statement that this is not something we would have done if we had a choice. We feel very strongly about the contracts we sign and the obligations we agree to, so it upsets us that we had to back out of the agreement we made.

That said, here's what happened. May 1st, we gave the apartment manager 60 days notice that we would be vacating. She said, "ok, that's a total of two months rent as a termination fee, and we can arrange a payment plan for you to pay it off gradually." That's what we thought would happen. So, it seemed reasonable, and we pulled the trigger on moving.

We should have gotten it in writing.

Two weeks ago, Adam and I went to the leasing office to see the manager and try to work out our payment plan. To our surprise, not only was the manager whom we had made the agreement with not present, but she had been fired the week before.

Gulp.

We spoke to the new manager, and she seemed very nice. She said the other manager misspoke and that it would be one month's rent and a redecorating fee, but that she would double check with her supervisor and get back to us.

A week went by, and we had heard nothing from the manager. We went forward with our original plan, unsuspecting of calamity, and moved everything out of the apartment into the storage unit I rented. We were going to sleep at mom's and spend the days cleaning the apartment to the management's specifications.

The first day I was going to start cleaning the apartment (Tuesday of this week), I came to the door to find a little note about our termination fees. They wanted 2 month's rent and almost a thousand dollars more as a "special" fee, and they wanted it by Saturday, or they would send our bill to a collections office.

Double gulp.

I didn't know what a "special" fee could mean, but it almost doubled the amount owed and there was no sense that we could pay it later than Saturday. I went down to the office twice to try to get our lease agreement so I could find out what that "special" was about, and they "couldn't find my lease." Twice. The third time, Adam went with me, and we got a copy of everything we signed for our contract.

Now, the special was a concession agreement written addendum to the lease and said that we would pay over $800 upon moving out if we moved out before our lease was up in December. The reason for this was apparently because we got a reduced rate on the apartment, and if we left sooner than the date on the lease, we would have to pay back everything that we saved by having the reduced rate. The problem was, we had no idea there was a concession on our apartment. Do you know why? Because we never signed it.

They FORGED our signatures.

Now, I'm not a lawyer, but I'm pretty sure that's bad news.

It wasn't quite an ace in the hole, though. If the office went by our lease agreement, we would actually have to continue paying rent until the unit was re-occupied, which would be substantially more than two grand. We only had one bargaining chip, and if it didn't work, we would have to keep paying rent for the apartment, which sort of defeats the purpose of moving in the first place.

We went to the office, and discussed the two months' rent (which was all we wanted to pay since that's what the original manager told us to begin with). Then, the topic of the concession came up, and in my best "mah baby's in dah hospital" voice, I said that was confusing to us because those weren't our signatures and we didn't know there was a concession. After they compared our signatures on the lease with the ones on the addendum, they decided not to hold us accountable for the special and only charged us 2 months' rent.

Phew.

They signed a payment plan agreement with us and wrote that our account would be closed by the last payment in August, which we all signed and dated, and which Adam promptly scanned into our computer. We were giddy from the adrenaline rush the whole rest of the day.

And that's how we didn't have to come up with $2,200 by tomorrow.

The moral of the story is: always get everything in writing, and it's useful to have a very unique signature.