dont sweat these things.

Working for rent creates Sweat Equity and in a dispute, you run a foul of state employment regs. 

The place would have required a ton of sweat equity and then the idea of it falling into the abyss without any recourse?  

They all had beads of sweat on their faces and looked miserable. 

Sure I would be sweating it out with a maxed out HELOC balance, but assuming I'm on a bi-weekly payment schedule I would have $2500 coming very soon to get me through the month.  

If the triplex (or 3x family) is generally in good condition and you are paying market rate, you're robbing yourself of potential sweat equity and cash flow gains, as well as appraisal gains from NPV from rents.

This person must willing to jump in with some sweat equity so we can maximize our ROI, and a bonus would be if this person has capital. 

Are goal is with my sweat equity of managing them to have someone else pay off the houses!

I have a lot of sweat equity in it as well for the years I owned.

If I were the OP I'd be focusing my attention  on the what is going to happen to the rent due in 17 or so days rather than sweating a late fee.We don't consider it constructive to invoke our late fee clauses and have never done so.