Q: Q: I saw marijuana when in my rental house. Can I give them a notice of violations?
As stated on the lease my tenants signed, they cannot have marijuana in any form on the premises.
My handyman was doing work in the house and he saw a huge bag of marijuana on the tenants table. He took a picture of it. Can I use this as evidence that they are breaking the lease?
The handyman was their to fixed something and was not there to do an inspection. So is this evident is not usable?
At another time, I also saw some marijuana on the table, when I was there to do some weatherization. It was small amount of marijuana on the table. I took a whiff and it was marijuana.
A: You can always issue a notice of violation. If/when you actually go to court to terminate the tenancy and evict based upon it, however, you will have the burden of proving both violations (the initial which caused the issuance of the notice and the subsequent violation that proves they did not "cure" the lease violations. That said, if they have a medical marijuana card, you likely cannot either ban it entirely or evict them because of it. You can, however, certainly prohibit smoking/vaping it on the premises due to the danger of damage to the premises. Consuming edibles, however, is likely to be considered a different matter. And if edibles are permissible, it likely will be hard to evict a tenant just for having possession of the ingredients.
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