LANDLORD ATTORNEY SERVING THE DALLAS-FORT WORTH METROPLEX

An eviction is a lawsuit.  And like any lawsuit, your eviction will involve pleadings.  Texas law requires your pleadings to strictly comply with the rules outlined in the Texas Rules of Civil Procedure.  Your Justice of the Peace’s job is to confirm you have met these requirements.  But strictly complying with these rules is not enough.  You also need to ensure you do not set yourself up for failure.  Mr. Girling has personally witnessed Legal Aid organizations dismantling a landlord’s lawsuit because the landlord pulled documents off the internet.  Free, online documents are always risky.  NEVER use the documents Texas Justice of the Peace Courts offer to landlords.  Girling Law uses its own attorney-drafted pleadings.  At the beginning of every year our attorney updates our firm’s eviction pleadings to ensure compliance with the Texas Legislature’s annual changes.  More importantly, our pleadings are drafted with trial strategy in mind.

Justice of the Peace Courts typically schedule eviction trials about three weeks after the eviction petition is filed.  While eviction trials are quite easy compared to other civil trials, this does not mean you are guaranteed to win.  Some Justices of the Peace in the DFW Metroplex have extraordinarily high rates of dismissals (i.e. the landlord loses).  We have had landlords call us after having lost 3 times in a row!  Something you must remember as the landlord is that YOU HAVE THE BURDEN OF PROOF.  This means it is YOUR JOB to prove to your Judge what type of relationship your occupant has with you, whether or not your tenant had an agreement with you, what type of agreement that was, and – if applicable – how your tenant breached that agreement.  This must be done with evidence.   And the Judge will never take your word over your tenant’s.  Your verbal statement is often insufficient to meet your burden.

Obtaining an eviction judgment IS NOT the end of the process.  After you win an eviction judgment against your tenant, you must wait out the tenant’s appeal period and – if your tenant does not appeal – you must start the process to have the tenant removed.  This mystifies some DFW landlords.  Just because the Judge orders the tenant to vacate your rental property does not mean the tenant will listen!  It is on you to take the steps required to have Constables go to the property to forcibly remove all of the occupants.  If your tenant owes you rent, you will also want to start reporting this fact to the tenant’s credit reports.  These activities are the “post-judgment” activities that are a part of every eviction.  These steps are always a part of Girling Law’s eviction service.

Texas is a notoriously difficult state to collect unpaid rent from a tenant.  Collecting rent is not possible in all cases.  However, the level of difficulty with this step results in few Texas Landlords taking the initiative to pursue collections.  Girling Law evaluates the likelihood of successfully collecting on each of our evictions.  Where it makes sense to pursue the collection of rent after we win an eviction judgment, we implement an aggressive process to do so.  This can result in lump sum payments from the tenant or in payments made over time.  The best part for the landlord is that there is no out-of-pocket costs!  Our firm IS NOT being paid by the hour for this part of the service.  Girling Law is paid a contingency (a percentage of the amount collected) on each successful collection.  Please note that this is part of our eviction service.  We will not agree to collect on old judgments that you previously obtained.