If you own or manage a residential rental property in Missouri you will certainly want to make sure you understand the laws that govern the payment of rent to you. When you and a tenant enter into a lease or rental agreement, you are agreeing to a legal contract. Perhaps one of the most basic terms of this contract is that the tenant will pay you a certain amount of money at certain specified dates in exchange for the right to live in your property. What happens when your tenant fails to do this?
As the Missouri Attorney General explains that the non-payment of rent may be a reason that legally supports you evicting the tenant. If you are in such a position, you will need to provide written notice of eviction to the tentant. The tenant’s failure to pay rent may essentially end the lease prematurely. However, there is one particular situation in which a tenant might seek the right to withhold rental that may be allowed under the law.
Just like the tentant has a legal responsibility to pay rent, you have a legal responsibility to ensure the residence is kept secure and sanitary so as to be habitable. If a tenant has alerted you to the need for a repair and you have not made the repair or made plans to have the repair taken care of, they may have some recourse for not paying some rent. The window for a tenant here is rather slim and stipulates a certain length of tenancy with no prior late rental payments and no other violations to the lease on their part.
If you would like to learn more about repairs, evictions and rental payments, please feel free to visit the rent page of our Missouri landlord-tenant law website.