Eviction and the legal steps

[Chelsea Webb]

This is a long and complicated situation so please bare with me! I have a friend struggling with an eviction and if she is taking the right steps. She owns a property that she agreed to Rent to own on a 2 year contract in November of 2015. They arranged a certain amount of rent for the first year, then a small increase starting 6 months into the lease. The tenant claimed she was waiting for a payment of inheritance money within the year and would be paying majority of the entire cost when she got it. The tenant was late many times on rent and never paid the increased amount when the time came. The tenant has children in the home so she allowed the tenant to stay as long as she continued to pay, and worked on paying the past due rent to zero. The tenant did get the inheritance and a large income tax return at the same time, yet paid nothing the the landlord. Tenant fell further behind but when confronted, would hand the landlord ( single widowed young mother of 2 young kids) a decent amount of money so the landlord would be sympathetic and allow them to stay. The two year mark came and the land contract wasn't paid off, so she decided not to renew the lease but allow the tenant to continue on as a month to month agreement. That was November of 2017. They continued to make partial payments, were not communicating with landlord, so the landlord had about enough at this point. In March of this year 2018 she gave them a 7 day notice to pay or quit. The tenant paid a decent amount of the past due but not all. The landlord agreed to allow them to stay if she paid a set amount weekly until balance was paid plus keeping the current rent paid as well. The tenant was doing just that with no problems until about a week ago the landlord got a call from the state police that there was suspected drug manufacturing and trafficking of a controlled substance. She was informed that the tenants children were in foster care now and there would be a search warrant executed in the next few days. They advised that she file for eviction and so she did. That same night the property was raided and both the tenant and her boyfriend were arrested and charged with trafficking a controlled substance and taken to jail. The news report stated the police performed multiple controlled buys from both tenant and boyfriend at the property......what happens now? Wait for the court date for the eviction to be awarded? I figure she has to wait but the tenant will not be in court because she is in jail for a while. Tenant has not been sentenced but is not eligible for bail. There are animals in the house, and multiple different people entering the property "on behalf of the tenant" and the landlord is worried about her property being damaged, someone getting hurt and so on. Does the landlord have any rights to keep people from entering the property? And when can the landlord remove the tenants property? Any help is appreciated.