I'm probably going to hire a lawyer since I live in MA, the most joyous of all tenant friendly states. However am also considering just offering $1,000 cash for keys, since it'll probably be faster and cheaper.

My big fear is that they will mysteriously have a slip and fall when I send them a notice to quit, which has happened to me before. Tenant cannot pay rent, mysteriously slips on ice, and asks for 20k from insurance. Is there anything to protect against this? I want to have all this done before it starts snowing and becomes more likely. I can't think of anything aside from literally installing cameras everywhere, but if they wanted to they could just rip cameras down so that seems futile.