Multiple Tenants and Utilities

[Elaine Lau]

Here’s my situation.

I have a house I’m renting out to two different tenants, with their own separate units. 

Tenant A has a family of 5 and rents the main part of the house. The terms of the original contract was that I would have the utility bills in my name, and tenants would pay for utilities on a per-head basis. So, Tenant A would pay for 5/6 of the utility amount. Tenant B, a single person, would pay for 1/6 of the utility amount.

When Tenant A moved in, he and his wife took over all of the utility bills without asking me. Tenant A reassured me that he would provide the utility bills every month so that Tenant B would know how much to pay for utilities.

It’s been almost a year and Tenant A has never once sent me any utility bills, saying they are busy. At this point I think they just don’t want to share how much they are paying for utilities.

So I ended up in this situation where Tenant A complained that Tenant B was not paying utilities. But Tenant B did not know how much to pay! Tenant A was stubborn and did not want to take the time to share actual calculations of the actual utility bills.

To solve this issue of Tenant B not knowing how much to pay for utilities every month, I asked Tenant A and Tenant B for verbal agreement for an estimation of the utilities that Tenant B can pay per month, we all agreed on a monthly estimate that seemed reasonable. $60/per month for Tenant B.

Tenant B agreed verbally on this, but ever since that agreement he still neglected to include the $60 as an estimate for utilities in addition to his rent.

I can’t make him pay it, since I do not have the actual utility bills. But I had already agreed to forward $60 / month to Tenant A every month, so Tenant A is now paying $60 less in rent per month..

What would you do in my situation?