I work as an apartment manager and have some tenants that cause a huge amount of problems including being raided by the police for drug use, housing criminals, having their pit bulls (that they are not supposed to have) leave waste on other people’s porches, and also throwing that animal waste at other tenants. I really need to get these tenants out!
I am not a lawyer and have never done this before and my employers are too cheap to pay for legal advice, telling me that “a manager should be able to do this as one of their job requirements” even though they knew when they hired me that I’d never done this before.
We are in Washington State. I have read the laws and have the eviction forms. I gave them a 20 day legal notice in person and with a witness and mailed it certified mail January 30th for them to be out by Feb. 28th. Mar 1 landed on Sunday so I filed a Evictions Summons and Evictions Complaint with the Court on the 2nd and paid a law office Process Server to serve them the papers.
However, on the Eviction Summons I only gave the tenants 9 days to respond b/c they are always home, they never work and do not have a car, so even if they are not in their apartment they are very close by and they have other adults living there that are not on the lease but that would be able to sign for the papers.
Legally they have to have at least seven days to respond once receiving the papers and the only reason they haven’t received them is b/c they refuse to sign for them. I do not know why the process server did not leave them at their feet and consider them served. So, now if they sign for them or are served, as I understand it, they can dismiss the case because they do not have a long enough response time.
I realize my mistake now (I think- not entirely sure, I am not a lawyer) in that I needed to allow enough time so that if they refused to sign I could have enough time to get a court order to serve them through alternate means b/c of not being able to serve them the normal way, and for the deadline to still be legally effective.
So, my question is, what do I do now? What legal forms do I need to file? Do I have to start all the way over, can I just refile the summons and complaint and add a later date? If I do that would I use the same case # or a different case #?
Sorry so long to explain! Thank you for your answer!