Mutual Termination Agreement

[Ko Saynourath]

First off, I'm new to the BP community and I just wanted to say and give a slight intro about myself.  My wife and I have been landlords for 16 years and now have three properties simply because we just converted our homes to rentals each time we moved.  In all the years we've been landlords we've never had any issues with our tenants and have had great working relationships with them.  We've always gone above and beyond to take care of our tenants and hoping in return they would do the same and fortunately for us they have. 

We now have a tenant that moved into one of our properties in November and who have been headaches since the walk through when we handled the keys over to them.  We did a proper screening just like we have with all our other tenants but these tenants completely did a 180 on us the moment the received the rental.  I won't go into the details of every issue but I am sure we have gone above and beyond and have taken care of even the most minor issue(or non issue) in a timely manner.  Especially with this latest issue.

I won't go into all the details because I could write a novel with it, but basically they threatened with lawsuits, our lawyer doesn't think they have a case but advised to offer them their some money(rent) just to get them out because it will most like be cheaper than going through lawsuit.  We swallowed our pride and offered them May's rent back and they leave withing 7 days as long as they sign a mutual general release.  They refused and are working on getting everything finalized on their estimates for damage and hotel stays away from the home.  There's no way that their new counter will be anywhere near reasonable once they finally get it to us.   A lawsuit at this point is inevitable so we have rescinded our offer that they wouldn't have accepted anyways and are not both agreeing to work on a termination of lease to get them out by May 31 so they're not responsible for rent and we won't have to start the eviction and they can sue us in which case, USAA will take over for us and we won't have to spend even more money on the lawyer that we're currently working with.

The new terms will be that we give them back only their security deposit less damages and we'll send it to them as soon as they pay the last water bill and they will vacate by May 30.  I wanna make sure we don't mess this up and having it cost us later but this is the best and simplest termination I could find:

Mutual Termination of Lease Agreement

For good and valuable consideration,___________________, landlords, and _________________________, tenants, agree to amend and terminate the lease/rental agreement presently in force and dated _____________________. Said lease/rental agreement for the property located at__________________________________, shall become null and void, once consideration has been given and terms and consideration are complied with, as described below, and this document is executed by all parties. Terms of Consideration:

In this mutual termination, both landlord and tenant agree to the disposition of deposits and financial responsibilities in the following manner:

Landlord will return security deposit by June 6, 2018 less damages caused by tenants, missing items and outstanding utilities/water bills.

We'll fill in the terms later but do you think this is good enough?  What would you add or delete?  Any suggestion helps.

Thanks,

Ko Saynourath