In this document we present four overlapping strategies for avoiding late fees, countering claims that you paid your rent late, and pressuring outlaw landlords to stop making false claims:
Strategy #1: Understand exactly which five days you have to pay rent.
You may encounter property managers who say, on the 2nd day of the month, that the rent is now overdue. But it is not.
'Due' is the state between 'not due' and 'overdue'.
California law recognizes that many people are paid on the first of the month and may not be able to access financial services immediately, and so has fixed the amount of time that a tenant has to pay their monthly rent at five business days.
A business day is any day where financial and government services are fully accessible.
Saturdays, Sundays and any holiday where banks or government offices close are NOT business days.
For instance, let us pretend that today is Saturday, the 31st of December, 2022. Rent is due tomorrow, Sunday, the 1st of January. But banks are closed on Sundays and so is the post office, so no financial transactions can occur and no payments can be delivered. So our five days do not start until Monday, the 2nd of January.
But Monday, the 2nd of January is also a holiday. It is a federal holiday, to make sure federal employees get a day off even when a holiday falls on a Saturday or a Sunday. So now our five days do not start until Tuesday, the 3rd of January.
Tuesday, the 3rd ... Wednesday, the 4th ... Thursday, the 5th ... Friday, the 6th. Those are the first four business days of January, 2023. We still have one business day left in which to pay our rent.
Saturday, January 7th is not a business day.
Sunday, January 8th is not a business day.
Monday, January 9th is the fifth business day of January.
It is not until the clock strikes midnight on Monday, the 9th of January, and it becomes Tuesday, the 10th of January, that your rent, in January 2023, is overdue.
And so you could in good faith take until Friday, the 6th of January, 2023, to go to the US post office, and mail your rent. You could mail a postcard to yourself at the same time. Odds are excellent that you will receive the postcard you mailed to yourself, the next day. And so odds are excellent the property management agency will have received the rent, as well.
But what if your check bounces?
Strategy #2: Use a money order to avoid bounced checks and overdraft charges.
We are not sure but we suspect the most common cause of late fees might be bounced checks.
After seeing property managers retain checks for long times and cause problems with our checking account balance, we realized that we could avoid these problems if we just purchased a money order. We found that bank money orders were literally ten times more expensive than United States Postal Service money orders and so we began to buy our money orders at the post office, which also made mailing our rent very simple.
We now realize that it is very likely that the owner of the house we were renting at the time was depositing our checks in a tardy manner as a deliberate policy of creating problems to justify late fees. And so by paying with money orders we protected ourself from predatory practices and improved our rating with the bank, too.
But what if the property manager claims they didn't receive the money order?
Strategy #3: Use USPS certified mail to prove when your mail was delivered.
We think we speak for every renter who has or will ever live, throughout the multiverse, when we ask, "What do you do if you pay your rent on time but the owner or their agent insists you did not and that you owe them a late fee?".
As it turns out, there is a solution. And it only takes a few more minutes.
Again, we turn to the United States Postal Service.
The solution to crooked property managers faking late fees - and a bunch of other problems - is called United States Postal Service Certified Mail.
It's a two-part system. You'll need a PS Form 3800 (written in tiny letters along the bottom of the card) and a PS Form 3811 (same). Nobody calls them that, however; USPS personnel call these items "the green certified mail postcard" and "the green certified mail receipt".
So you have a check - or, better yet, a money order - made out to the person or organization that receives the rent. You have an envelope. You have addressed the envelope. You have put a return address on the envelope. You have put the check into the envelope. You have sealed the envelope. You are about to put on the stamp onto the envelope. STOP!
Instead of putting a stamp on the envelope ... fill out the certified mail postcard. Go to the post office. Pay the fee. Send the money, certified. It's like a stamp, but with tracking.
The first time, you'll need to go to the post office to get one of each form - postcard, and receipt. Ask for some extras. Then you can fill them out at home where it is more convenient and save time at the post office by having your envelope and certified mail forms all ready.
The instructions are right on the card:
Item 1 is the address you are sending your rent to. Print the name of the intended recipient and address directly beneath the text that says "1. Article Addressed to:".
Item 2 is the Article Number. Do you have your PS Form 3800, US Postal Service Certified Mail Receipt? The number printed along the left side is actually a sticker with a serial number. Peel that sticker off that receipt and paste it right in Item 2, directly underneath the text that says "2. Article Number (transfer from service label)".
Item 3 is the Service Type. There are THIRTEEN different types of service this card can be used to verify! You want the third checkbox of Item 3, directly beneath the text that says "3. Service Type", the one that says "Certified Mail" - NOT the "restricted delivery one", the other one.
Turn the green postcard over. Address the postcard to yourself, at the address that you want the postcard to be sent to.
Now let us complete PS Form 3800, the US Post Service Certified Mail Receipt. Fill out the name and address of the intended receipient.
Assemble these three items - the sealed, addressed envelope, with a return address, containing your rent payment ... the green "certified mail" postcard ... and the green "certified mail" receipt ... and stand in line, at the US Post Office, during open hours, Monday through Friday, 9:30 AM to 5:00 PM.
Transfer these three items to the postal clerk. He or she will place them on a scale, weigh them, enter the address, calculate the postage, and tell you what the cost will be.
We will be honest: the cost we personally paid USPS for this service, in January, 2023, was $7.85. But we regard this as cheap insurance. The security it gives us each month is worth the cost. And it's cheaper than paying a late fee every few months. Just one $50 late fee, avoided by these methods, will pay for six months of certified mail.
The clerk will accept your payment, assemble your postcard and the envelope, stamp your receipt with the day and time, take your mail, and return your receipt.
Don't lose the receipt! That sticker you peeled off the receipt and attached to the green postcard is your tracking number. Now we will see the value of certified mail - every item is tracked.
Six days later, when your unscrupulous property owner or manager tries to dun you an extra $50 for not paying the rent on time, you can just go to the USPS website, https://tools.usps.com/go/TrackConfirmAction!input.action, enter your tracking number, and instantly see when the mail was delivered.
You should also receive the green postcard. The recipient needs to sign the green postcard (and identify themself, if you have specified certified mail to a specific person) in order to receive the mail, and so you will possess the signature of the person who received the envelope containing the payment.
Keep the stamped USPS certified mail receipt you received when you mailed the envelope, the green postcard you received a week or so later, after the envelope was received, and the receipt from the money order, if any, together - staple them and keep them in a folder, somewhere - these are your proofs that you paid your rent, and on time, too. Don't throw them away until you no longer live at this address. You never know when you might need this evidence.
If your property owner or manager falsely accuses you of paying the rent late, this is the evidence that California Superior Courts will accept. If your property's owner later claims you are habitually late with rent and tries to falsely evict you under fraudulent grounds you can present evidence that the property owner is not telling the truth and get the eviction quashed.
But what if your property owner insists the law does not apply to them?
Strategy #4: Aggressively prosecute larceny, using the above as evidence.
Our research indicates that obtaining money under false pretenses is a form of larceny - which is a crime in California.
Our research also indicates that this behavior may be embezzlement.
We advise you to network. Contact your fellow tenants, local police department, district attorney, local journalists and newspapers with copies of your records (not originals - those need to be protected), describing your experience as a tenant of a habitual violator of California law, and ask that they help.
Criminals - and lawyers - may always be with us; some of the worst criminals we know are lawyers.
(Phrased another way, we estimate that approximately half of the people in any court of criminal law who call themselves officers of the court, are intent upon either violating the law, concealing a violation of the law, or both - and, furthermore, that they earn a very good living doing so, and are honored by everyone.)
But, together, we can put larceny on the defensive - by enforcing our laws, ourselves.
Food for thought.