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Tenancy Laws
Hi,
I used to stay in Belgium till last year. I have moved to another country in Europe.
I had a serious difference of opinion with my Belgian land lord.
Hence have not yet paid the penalty amounts eg : Bank guarantee money, Expert after investigation chrges, pending gas and electricity charges.
My land lord keeps mailing me to pay up or he will take Legal Action. But, i am not willing to pay.
Will he be able to implicate me with Legal Action ? Since i no loner live
in Belgium ? (though am living in a nearby country)
If you're worried about it, it suggests that you know you're wrong.
Regardless of what the landlord does, not paying the expert or utilities will end up in court, each time with all the fees associated with them. They will most likely then pass the debt on to bailiffs in the country you live in now, and fees will continue to pile up.
i don't think that you can find the answer to your problem in here unless you give more details about the issues you have with your landlord. In any any case running away is not the solution and if you can't find any agreement to the disputes your only choice is to go through a Juge de Paix who will check the facts and decide based on the current laws on tenancy. But you could be at fault and pay much more than currently due.
By the way the landlord can also approach the juge de paix regardless you are in the country or or not.
This is the law as it is applied in Belgium.
You signed a contract with your landlord.
Nothing that he does or fails to do allows you to ignore the contract that you have signed. If he takes you to court, you WILL lose. If there is a court judgement against you it applies throughout the EU and you will face paying what you owe your landlord plus all the costs of the legal proceedings right up to the costs of the bailiffs coming to collect the money or your goods if you cannot pay.
If the gas and electricity charges are separately billed by the suppliers directly to you, they will also take you to court.
He can go to court and get a judgment against you even in your absence. Of course it depends on what kind of costs he is asking for, but from what you mention it will very likely go in his favour.
- charges for the fee of the expert who did the exit survey: if it is mentioned in the lease that these are shared between the landlord and the tenant, this is a clear point
- charges for damages, as established by the exit survey report made by the expert: clear point as well because you would have needed to argue against these at the time; now it's too late
- gas and electricity charges: if you had an arrangment (very common) where you paid a certain estimated amount every month, and then at the end of the year when the landlord gets the final bill you were required to pay for any extra not covered by the monthly provisions, this is also an open and shut case. As long as the landlord has the correct bills the judge will find in his favour.
So the end result is that you do in fact owe this money and the landlord will get a judgment in his favour. With this judgment he can then go to the bailiffs.
Whether he will bother depends on the amount of money involved; if it's only a few hundred maybe he won't bother but for example the winter of 2012 was exceptionnally cold so your heating bills are likely to have been a lot higher than the monhtly provision. So it could be that you in fact owe a couple of thousand euros, in which case it does make sense for him to get the bailiffs involved. They will pursue the debt and as the Netherlands is not that far away, they will not have much trouble doing that.
Can you let me know what happened in your case. I am in a similar position. Did your landlord file a case? Please reply.
