[mommaof3]

Putting my rent into escrow is still by law paying my rent, I just put it into an account through the clerk of courts where it is held until he can show proof of the problem being fixed and then he has to pay a fee of like $100 or maybe even more to get the money out. By paying my rent to the clerk of courts is a way of documenting through the judicial system how my landlord is acting.

We have a lawyer who is working on finding a way out of our lease right now. But the closer it gets to our lease being up the more pointless he feels it is to find another place. We have been looking at other houses in the area but the landlords are looking for long term tenants, with a year lease or more. And we don't want to end up paying out of pocket anymore than we already are. If we put our rent into escrow and he hasn't fixed the things that need to be done then he can't make his mortgage payment which is like $1500 or so, and our rent is a nice chunk of that. Plus he is unemployed and his fiance is the only one working and even with all of her paychecks a month and our rent they are barely able to pay it. So it is only a matter of time before he gets put out on the street for failure to comply with his banckruptcy terms. He filed a 13 so even one missed payment will result in the house being back up for auction. It was supposed to be auctioned off 15 days after we moved in, and we didn't know that. Luckily our lawyer said that we are safe for the term of our lease if it goes into forclosure and we would just pay our rent into escrow until he fixes the items (even if he is no longer in possession), and when he does fix them and the house hasn't been sold we pay him. We are only not obligated to pay him if the house sells. When it sells we then pay to whomever bought the property. And when he is no longer the "landlord" we can actually sue him for double the amount of our security deposit since he rented the property to us under false pretenses, but not until then.

I guess my husband talked to him this morning and he almost got arrested last night over the noise disturbance since this was the third time in like 2 weeks we had called, and he still hasn't paid the last ticket he got. He says he is going to call the police on us anytime he hears any sort of loud noises coming from our unit, but the cops said if they come out for something like a teething baby crying he will end up being the one in trouble because he is misussing the police department. The only loud people in the home are the kids when they are sick (whinning,crying), or just playing about the house. And we never have our tv up loud, heck we don't even have anything adult on until after 7:30 when they get ready for bed. And usually by then I am doing homework or getting ready for bed myself.

But I gotta go I am babysitting now and they just walked in the door and I have to finish baking cupcakes for my son's birthday party tonight.