It's whatever the agreement was at the beginning. If no agreement at the beginning, then go with equal share, unless DD wants to allow an amount for summer months (not sure it would be that much though). For next year, they should have written responsibilities, including financial. What did they do last year - don't remember if you said (sorry).

I wouldn't respond. It won't matter what she says anyway since they have already made up their minds. Your DD did nothing wrong.

Linda

Your daughter didn't pay more last summer while she stayed in the house so unless they had agreed that your DD should pay more because she was using the utilities this summer then I can't see how they should expect her to pay more. That was something that should be been discussed before.

What does your daughter want to do?

Her former roomates have made up their minds and they cannot be confused with the facts. They are in the wrong and they seem not to be willing to accept fairness!! Your daughter should not respond...sometimes you have to just dust yourself off, pick up and move on. Better she learn this early in life..

Her roomates also had the option of remaining for the summer-they knew that when they signed the lease. Because they chose to work at home, in another town, and not live in their college town is not your DD's problem. They knew the rules when they signed the lease.

I would caution your DD to not leave that amount of cash in the apartment, even if it is hidden. I think she should get the money to them ASAP, in some traceable way like a cashier's check or whatever. These girls do not sound trustworthy.

My DD has been living with 6 roomates from he--. I feel your pain. At least it gives DH and myself plenty of opportunities to say "we told you so", lol.

It sounds like your DD could've kept all the money and not said anything to any of the roommates.
NO good deed goes unpunished.
I like the wording in your final email. good luck.

Well, they should have talked about that if they knew they wouldn't be there over the summer and only your daughter would be. That is something they need to discuss for next summer.

But in the meanwhile, they are all paying the same amounts and have the contract for a full year at that place so that means they have to pay the same amounts unless they discuss and your daughter agrees to pay for it over the summer.

Its tough but they can just come right back to the same place instead of like so many have to do, is give up their place for the summer and then find a place at end of summer and rush to move their stuff all back in and start all over at new place.

I, too, don't like any kind of money especially that amount as one could sneak in and the other one come and say its all gone and accuss your daughter and she is left hanging with the bag and that isn't good. Or anything could happen to that amount of money.

No, it should have just been put in an account and when they got back, given to them then.

Those girls are getting a $300 windfall and they're griping?? Who are the greedy ones?

Kathleen has a very good point about leaving the cash in the apartment. It might be a good idea for her to put it all in the bank and write them each a check.

You daughter is holding the place for the summer, that should amount to something. It would be a big pain for the girls to give up the place and move every year. She's doing them a favor even if its unintentional. So even if they aren't using a years worth of utilities, having their place there for them each year is worth something. They should be thanking her by NOT complaining.

You said it amounted to $300. each?! Having a problem understanding how landlady could have "approximated" $1,200 too high! And that she just left that much cash sitting in the kitchen--especially in a rental.

If it were my DD (and she really didn't want to end on a sour note) I'd suggest she find the cost of her summer utilities and add that amount, divided among the other 3, to their rebate. I'll bet the amount comes to peanuts.

You said she had a good relationship with them all before this. Is it worth maintaining? Up to her. DD is long out of college, but made lots of good friends. For several years they would call and get together when they were in her area, and she did the same. Always a friendly face in an unfamiliar place, so to speak. Others, including many roomies, she'll never see again--nor care to.

If this were my DD I would suggest to her that she talk to the landlady and ask her if dividing the money like she did was fair. If the landlady says yes it is fair, I would ask her to send an email to each of the girls and so state. That should settle it.

I think your DD should then deposit the money and send them each a check, as Pattie43 said.

Sue

Send those girls a money order tomorrow then forget the whole thing.

Their minds are made up.
Even if your daughter were to redistribute the money in the roomate's favor they would still be miffed.

Sorry this has happened to your daughter!

Lori

The landlady is an idiot! She left cash in a rental unit??? Stupid, stupid, stupid!

She should have issued a separate check to each of the residents, and not left it up to one to divide the amount.

Were it my daughter, I'd have had her return the cash immediately, demand a receipt, and had the landlord issue separate checks. That is assuming all persons had a separate lease, of course.

It's probably too late for your daughter, but it's something to think about in any future rentals

I'm a little confused here. Is THIS the situation? The girls stayed there for the school year, paid an estimated utility bill, landlady recalculated and gave them a refund for the SCHOOL year? or for the entire year of the lease? Also, are the other girls still paying their share of the rent during the summer?

IF the refund is for up to June (or whenever the year ended), then I'd say it's correct to divide it equally. And your dd should immediately send each girl a check by certified, return receipt mail, so she has proof it was recieved and cashed.

If that's the case, though, I do think your dd SHOULD pay the entire utility bill for the months she's living there alone.

Or is the refund for the whole year? If so, that complicates things, because it's true, these girls shouldn't have to pay for your daughter's showers, lights, refrigeration costs, etc. Why should they? So it should be recalculated so that the others aren't paying for what they're not using. It's fair they pay their share of the rent--since they've chosen not to live there, and since they probably still have belongings in the apt. They signed a lease and are responsible for paying their rent. However, they really shouldn't have to pay a portion of the utility bill--especially since they're in no position to have any control (or conservation) over how much your daughter uses.

Does that make any sense?

Why not return the remainder of the money to the landloard explaining that she thinks it is best since she took her share it would be better for the landlord to return th rest dirctly to the others and have the Landloard sign a statemnet stating tht the cash had been returned to her. just an idea.
Hope she find a different set of roomines next tie

A contract is a contract.

Their contract to me sounds like this...the 3 girls would live there for 9 months, your DD would live there 12 months, holding the place for them. They'd pay X amount of dollars for utilities per girls for the year regardless of how long they resided there. Overage would be refunded to the girls. Overage would be divided among the 4 girls.

They signed it at the beginning, and they are being refunded now. Period.

A new contract can be negotiated when this one is ended.

Get money orders, pay the girls and let it be done. If they don't like it they can take her to small claims court (they won't win).

Once the money is sent, cut off contact, period. If this means changing E-mail accounts, then do so.

Vickey-MN

She doesn't owe them a dime more than 1/4 the amount refunded.
Did they unplug every little thing that belonged to them before they left? The responsibility of rent and utilities doesn't end just because one goes on vacation.

They are being petty and ridiculous. After prorating extra 3 months (and it wouldn't be a full 3 months anyway) the difference would be only about 25 dollars per girl. Refund was 1200 so that's 100 per month with "3" months of that pro-rated after figuring the actual power used by things left behind and jointly shared appliances like water heater,refrigerator etc.

They are being stupid college girls. Way too many hormones and now they can see school ending and they are "spooked".
Your daughter helped by being frugal all year. I think that landlady was giving them a high figure to cover herself in case more damage was done than the security deposit allowed.

I'm sure the 3 didn't pay for the summer months that your daughter stayed behind, so even though she paid less per month during this time, she still paid.

If you want to look at it from their point of view, from my calculations they're quibbling over $25 each (each girl paid $25 overage per month). [Daughter's 3 summer months x $25]. Hardly worth it, but if your daughter's losing sleep, maybe she should give each one $25 and move out for her last year.

Or hand the whole amount back to the landlord and have her dole it out. All their names must be on the lease, so that's what the landlady should have done.

It's early and I'm probably all wrong in my thinking, but I'm sure someone will correct me.

I just hope that one day it hits these stupid, greedy girls that they lost a perfectly good friendship over about $25. I hope your DD finds a way to get past this without it ruining everything for her. What a shame this happened.

I guess you can send a child to college but it doesn't automatically mean that they'll get smart. And just how stupid is it to tick off the person that has access to all your belongings while you are away? A really rotten kid could be in their rooms right now, unpicking seams on clothing and scrubbing out the toilets with their toothbrushes. NOT that I'm condoning that behavior, of course! Oh, no. Not me. ;)

I'm sorry this happened, what a crappy way to end a college stint. Your poor DD. I hope she graduates and moves on and makes a real success out of her life, as opposed to being greedy and petty and catty like some other girls she knows.

I think she should return all the money and have the landlord divide it as she sees fit and send each person the money via a check or money order. The landlord seems to be the problem here.

As for your daughter, if your daughter had moved back home like the others, the utilities would have still needed to be paid. I really doubt that your daughter used all that much in utilties so the others should consider themselves lucky that she was there keeping an eye on things. I don't feel your daughter owes them a thing and I doubt I'd pay them back anything but it is her choice. Is she needing to live with them in the fall? If so, I'd give them some extra money just to keep the peace.

It sounds as if most/all of the correspondence was done through e-mail. I have found people spout too much when not done face to face. I bet if this was done in person she would not have gotten so much grief from roommates. Bet ya the first girl who responded via e-mail is the instigator and the 2nd one followed, just mean girls, probably always was, always will be. There seems to be one in every crowd.

I would return money to landlord and let landlord pass out the money to the other girls. Hopefully this is blown over when they return from school.

Most landlords rent don't rent to individual roommates - it is one apartment, rented to a group of girls who are all equally responsible. If one girl opted not to pay her rent, the others would be responsible or they all suffer the consequences. It is not the landlord's responsibility to divide that money. She has no idea what arrangements were made between them (sometimes a roommate pays more for a larger room, to have their own room, etc).

If the other girls didn't have an agreement with her not to divide everything equally beforehand, that's their problem.

Don't make this the landlord's problem.
Your daughter should send one more note wishing them the best and then stop responding.
I'm really sorry that this happened to her - it is very hurtful, but best to just chalk it up to bad judgment on the roomies parts and move on.

I'd be checking over the lease & seeing if my dd could move out. I wouldn't want to live with these peeps in the fall.

I can't believe that the landlord gave the refund back in CASH. That would not be a sound business move on her part. How is she going to prove to the IRS that she gave the refund without a canceled check and receipt? She now will have to report the amount she refunded as income. This does not make sense.

And on top of that the landlord illegally entered the home and "left and envelope of cash on the kitchen table". Does this woman have no brains?? Why would she not call and hand it over and get a receipt, or mail a check to the address? If your daughter was dishonest she could have said she never found an envelope of cash on the table. Or heaven forbid it got tossed in the garbage when tidying up the kitchen not even knowing what it was. Young college students can tend to be messy.

The LL should have issued separate checks and mailed them to *last known address*. For your DD that would be the current rental unit. For the other girls that would be where ever they happened to be residing.

Depending on how the lease and rental agreement was written the other girls could sue the LL for not recieving the proper amount.

I've never heard of utilities being billed separately by a landlord either. Water and heat are included in the rent and the rent amount is priced accordingly. This type of situation would/should never even come up.

Was this a rental unit with all the girls co-signing? Or a boarding house arrangement with each girl having a separate agreement for their stay? Either way, the story has loose ends.

Thank you all for your responses, I couldn't get back on until this morning to reply. I'll hopefully address some very good questions you have all asked. Firstly, the landlady had phoned DD, but as she was leaving for work, she gave permission for the landlady to enter their house and leave the envelope on the kitchen counter. DD thought it would contain one total cheque, or 4 seperate ones, but she found a legal size envelope containing a spread sheet showing a breakdown of the usage and cost of the utilities covering their May to May lease of last year, and four letter sized envelopes inside, with each girl's names and the (same) amount of cash written on each one.

The lease agreement for the flat was one contract, signed by all four girls. It stated that the rental fee was X amount per month and the utilities fee was X amount per month, making the amount owed each month a total of that combined figure. The landlady verbally offered to rebate the girls at the end of the yearly lease if her utilities invoices came to less, because she had made some major energy savings changes in the house and didn't know how well these changes would actually affect the costs each month. Kudos to her, she kept her word and rebated them the overcharge to the penny.

My DD has a friend who just passed the Bar, and after she told him what was happening, he explained that their lease agreement makes all the girls liable to pay the amount they signed for, regardless of some ending up leaving for the summer. He basically told DD that what her roomates are trying to do amounts to extortion, because they are not entitled to any portion of DD's rebate money, just because she stayed in town for the summer while they left. Of course, DD did not mention that in her email, because she knows these are law abiding girls who in their hearts just think they should get back more of a refund since they aren't there to use any utilities for the summer. DD works all day and is away every second weekend for her job, so being away much more often in the summer than she was during the school term, she's using even less than the quarter portion of her 'allotment', which was already a huge overcharge. However, her lawyer friend said that's a moot point because lease agreements operate a "you lose your share if you're not there" mentality, meaning a tenant isn't entitled to random discounts throughout the year when they come and go, using less utilities. He said the same applies in the summer months if it's a year lease, so tenants who wanted to be absent for extended periods of time should have sublet their room to defer their costs to someone else while they're away, since it was not prohibited in their lease.

DD has since talked to the landlady, who feels badly about the trouble DD is having. I was even more shocked that she risked leaving cash when I found out she's a longtime landlady who rents out more than 30 houses in that university town! However, she agreed to take back the cash and replace it with 4 cheques, so she'll have the cancelled cheques as her receipt, and so that DD won't be accused if the money got stolen.

DD has decided she will send out one final email if any more nasty ones are forthcoming. She plans to write "I had assumed that since we all realized we still had to pay our same utility fee during times we were away and didn't use them (example, when 3 of us went home for 2 weeks at Christmas) that likewise, you would realize any rebate would be divided equally. I apologize for my incorrect assumption, but I just didn't realize any of you assumed differently. If I had somehow gone OVER my portion of the utility fee for the summer months, I certainly would have paid the difference, since none of you were here. However, as I still used less than one quarter of our utility allotment, I am entitled to receive the same amount of rebate. I'm sorry you see things differently at this time, however I have enjoyed wonderful times living together and wish you all the best."

She has NOTHING to explain except to state that this is what the lease states, this what the rebate is period. Nothing about how much she used, etc. Do NOT go into the asumptions, etc. Keep it business. Nothing about assuming or anything. Here is the refund from the landlady, per our lease..then send copy of that part of the lease. Nothing more.

Vickey-MN