Location: Iowa. About a year and a half ago I met my boyfriend. He offered pretty early on for me to move in with him. I really needed a place to go and his mom had given him a house. She repeatedly told me that I should move in, it would be a good chance for us to both get back on our feet. A year later she told us we had to start paying rent. We split bills and I’d struggled to cover my half with the part time job I was able to do without childcare. She kept saying “oh don’t worry about it this month, I know y’all are having a hard time.”
A few months later he gets fired for constantly calling in and being a menace. He didn’t have a job for 4 months. I struggled to pay the bills with my waitressing job. Electric, water, gas, phones, internet, Disney plus for my daughter, insurance, his stupid rent-a-center bill, exterminator fees for the bugs that were there when we got there, more things I can’t even think of. I stupidly paid for his fines to get his license and bought him a car.
Long story short, he was not very nice to me and didn’t do a whole lot. I left him today. My family came to help, incredibly peaceful and loving to him despite his attempts to antagonize us in any way possible. My dad hugged him and said he’s sorry that he’s hurting. He tried to kick us out and got aggressive quite a few times. Then he called his mom to have her and her “biker friends” come over. She showed up all puffed up and pissed off, yelling at me, running about the house talking about how it was a wreck, how she’s going to sue me for rent. Got mean with my family, they deescalated, she calmed down, but maintains she’s going to sue me.
When I moved in I cleaned the hell out of it. Did some painting, shampooed the living hell out of the animal excrement packed carpets, scrubbed the walls, hands and knees scrubbed the floor. I re-did the shower, the sink, fixed cabinets, all kinds of things, all by myself and I paid for it. It’s messy because I work constantly and he works a few days a week for a few hours and refuses to pick up. I do my best, getting off of work at midnight running around like crazy cleaning while he’s got his feet kicked up watching me. He laughed at me and said “I didn’t even know she was gonna bring up suing you but I’m glad she is!” I know she’ll follow through, she’s legally evicted him from that house twice already. I was pretty certain that she doesn’t have any grounds here, but could she? On any of this?