Looking For a Way to Get Rid of Him
So I have had a very tense relationship with my neighbor for years. 10 years ago, I moved into my current apartment in Paris, which belongs to my parents, when I got an entry-level job. I have since moved up in the world but not paying rent is frankly too good considering how costly it is here.
When I moved in, I met my new neighbor. God was it a doozy. He inherited the place from his mother a few years before.
He was unemployed, hit his wife, had a party or a fight at his place pretty much every two nights between 2 am and 4 am, stocked building materials in the public areas of the building, had such a badly-taken-care-of place that once when I sent the authorities there, they came back a few days later because they were worried about his child’s health.
For months he forced his door because he lost his key and couldn’t pay for a locksmith, he once tried to force my door open at 5 am because something he had left unattended in the public area disappeared and he thought I had taken it.
Anyway, he disappeared a few years ago with his wife and daughter, and about a year ago, has come back alone. Since then, I’ve been looking for a way to get rid of him for my peace of mind.
Boy, did I find one. Note also that the day after his “friends” helped him move back in, someone tried to force my door open while I was at work.
One day, while telling some of his friends that they couldn’t just keep forcing the door open instead of making new keys, one of them told me he wasn’t afraid of me since he had already gone behind bars.
So, this weekend, that genius called the authorities. When the officers arrived he explained to them that he wanted the people in his apartment out and they didn’t want to leave.
Here is a summary of what the officers were told by both people during the discussion: First, my neighbor rented his place to a man but still lived in the place since he doesn’t have anywhere else to live.
The man had now arrived at the end of the rental agreement but didn’t want to leave. My neighbor failed to notify the authorities of the rental, meaning that he did not pay tax on it and didn’t have the proper authorization for rental, including things like the place having a fire escape.
He readily admitted so. He also doesn’t have a document proving the place belongs to him. See, his mother left it to him in her will. But in France, that’s not enough: Once you pay the taxes on the inheritance, a notary needs to write a new paper to say it actually belongs to you (which costs money).
He doesn’t have such a paper and doesn’t even know what it is, which means it’s likely he never paid the taxes on the inheritance. There is also a possibility he dodged local taxes on the apartment since it’s not in his name. Lastly, it just so happens that in France you can’t just throw someone out like that.
See, if they’ve been in the place for more than 48 hours, officers can’t just evict them; they need a judge to order it. Furthermore, you can’t do that between November the 1st and March the 31st to prevent people from being out on the street during winter.
So my neighbor did all that for nothing. Officers couldn’t force the occupant out without a court order and even then couldn’t apply that court order before the last day of March.
They growled a bit at everyone for the waste of time and asked the squatter to leave before Wednesday—which he agreed to, since he will have his own place on Wednesday.
All in all, it was a very, very fun evening and I feel like I will have a discussion with the fiscal administration to talk to them about those inheritance taxes.
Story credit: Reddit / MrBlackTie