We, just like every landlord, hate the "e" word. It makes us feel bad when we say it and the person who hears it feel even worse. It usually follows the "f" word, which is also pretty unpleasant, but comes before the "c" word, which makes us shudder just thinking about it. Lest you think we need to brush up on our alphabetization skills, the dreaded "e" word is "eviction." Hopefully your use of the "f" word – as in "failure" to pay rent – will help you avoid the worst "c" word of them all, "court."
In the state of Alabama, you are required to give seven days’ notice to a tenant who is behind on the rent before you initiate any eviction proceedings in court. This notice is only for failure to pay rent, not for other lease violations. If your tenant decided to house orphaned raccoons in your rental property despite a no-pets clause, this isn’t the form to use. (In that case, you’ll want to issue our Alabama 7 Day Notice to Terminate the Lease, but be sure to get a rabies vaccination if you’ll be serving the notice in person.)
Whether or not you’ve tried other means to get your tenant to pay (by issuing a Late Rent Reminder or Notice to Report Late Rent Payments, for example), you can use the Alabama 7 Day Notice for Failure to Pay Rent once a rent payment has been missed past any grace period. If the tenant fails to pay within the seven days, you can then terminate the lease agreement. You might even be able to recover damages and attorney’s fees.
Because we’ve done the heavy legal lifting for you, the document contains all of the necessary language, including giving the tenant the opportunity to pay up before he has to move on, and complies with Alabama’s Uniform Residential Landlord and Tenant Act. (Sounds pretty impressive, doesn’t it?)
To get started, all you have to do is click "Create Document," customize the form by clicking on the right property and tenant and enter the amount of money due. We’ll automatically add today’s date to the form, but you can change it if you need to. Click "Create Documents" and you’re done! Click on the document name to download and print it. Once you’ve done that, you can sign it and fill in by hand how and when notice was served.
Evictions are pretty complicated procedures, so you may want to brush up by reading our Overview of the Eviction Process: A Step-by-Step Guide to Eviction. We also have some other awesome articles that deal with evictions. Just look at our hand-picked selections below.