So, FI and have had some really bad luck starting back in Oct. They day before my birthday, he got in an accident and totalled his truck. Its a 2 lane road and there was a woman driving next to him slightly ahead and she just made a sharp left turn in front of him. It took awhile to get things settled through insurance because she's from England and she was driving her brother's car. He finally gets the money and buys a used 2001 Durango with about 80,000 miles on it. A month later the transmission blew, then some other stuff went and he ended up spending almost what he bought the car for in repairs. His parents were giving us money towards the wedding to use however we wanted and we had to use the money to fix his car. So there went our honeymoon money. Right now the car is working fine and nothing has gone wrong in a few months. So that's a positive.
We moved out of our apartment on Oct. 30 and moved in with my parents to save money for the wedding. If any of you are in the situation, you know how this story goes. So I'm patiently waiting for my security deposit and the 30 days the landlord has to give it back or give me an itemzied list comes and goes. The best part of this story is that the landlord and his wife are friends. I've been really good friends with her the past 6 years. So January I text her and ask her about it and she said he's sending me an itemized list. I get the list and he took all $1275 and said I owed him another $200. The only thing on the list I would give him is spackle and paint in the living room and what we owed for electric and water. He did not paint or clean before we moved in. His list was lies. They said we installed an illegal cable box behind the wall (I don't even know what would be considered an illegal cable box these days). They said we kicked in the door on the vanity in the bathroom. This was broken before we moved in and they knew that. They said we ruined the bedroom closet and they had to repair, paint and spackle it. Their was shelving in their from the previous tenant that they did not remove when they moved out. They said they had to paint the whole place because of all the cigarettes we smoked in there. I don't smoke nor would I let my fiance smoke in the house - he's not even allowed to smoke in my car. What makes them think i would allow him to smoke where I live, sleep and have all my clothes? Plus, he kept an ashtray out front to smoke that they saw every single day. They said we broke his AC unit. Too bad we never used their unit. We brought 2 of our own. We did break the toaste oven but we replaced it. That was on the list. I have text messages from his wife telling me not to worry about it replacing it. We also broke a window in January and we said we would replace it but he insisted because he wanted to do it himself and he had all the materials at his father's hardware store. Fine. We bought him a handle of jack to thank him. The window cost $25 (on the list) but he charged us for 2 days of labor at $190. Its funny because he came and fixed it the day after it happened - same day we told him. That's not even everything but the point of it is that he was being spiteful that we moved out and wanted the 2 months rent that he lost since it took them that long to find someone to move in. I was counting on this money to pay for some weding things. When I finally got the "itemized list" in the mail on January 12 (over 2 months after he was legally required to provide it to us), I freaked out. My FI called him and he said "Its just business brah, get over it". So we told him we would take him to court and he told us to go ahead because he's got his itemzied list.
Fast forward 2 months...FI loses his job 2 weeks ago - just another kick in the nuts for him. Pardon my language - couldn't think of a better phrase.
So back to the landlord debacle. My friend's FI is a lawyer and he volunteered to help us - family and close friends get 1 free representation. Their main claim was that we never notified them that we were moving out and they had no idea where we moved to. LIES!!! I have all the text messages between me and her saved. I have texts from the first week of October begging us to stay and not to move out and go back to my parents house. They provided "receipts" for all the "damage" we caused. They were handwritten receipts from his father's hardware store. All the receipts have preprinted numbers at the bottom. He dated one of them 12/11 and the number at the bottom was 177. He dated another 4/27 (the window which actually happened in january) and the number at the bottom was 183. They had one of their friends lie (even subpoened him)and say we installed the illegal cable box but the guy wouldn't call my lawyer back and confirm what they said. On Friday, they said let's call it even and walk away and no one owes anyone anything. They must be crazy thinking I'd let them walk away with $1275. My lawyer told him no and then provided all the info to him that they requested in discovery. He came back yesterday offering us $750 based on some really bad logic that I won't even get into. We said no. My lawyer told him that if we go to trial on Wed, they are going to owe a lot more than the $1275 and that's the least we will take at this point. If we go to trial, we would be awarded double the security deposit (less what they can prove we owe which is nothing based on what they provided) and then we would go for lawyer fees. He would end up owing us closer to $5000.
So, this morning I get a call and they agreed to give us all our money back! I'm hoping that this will be the turning point for us and nothing else will go wrong from now until the wedding. The only unfortunate part is that I lost a close friend in the process. But can I really call her a friend if she would do that and allow her husband to make a blatant lies out of spite? She just went along with all of it. I know I would never allow FI to do something like that to one of my friends.
Ok rant over. If anyone else needs some positive vibes today, I'm sending them out to you!
