This Week's Q & A

Q: I need some information about a landlord’s obligations and a tenant’s rights with regard to the condition of rental property. My wife and I currently rent a home in Framingham. It is old and in need of extensive repair – lead paint, unused heating-oil tanks stored in the basement, flaking asbestos insulation, cracked and broken flooring and falling ceramic tiles in the kitchen and bathrooms, and antique wiring are just some of the most pressing issues.

We were aware of these problems when we moved in but were willing to overlook them in order to obtain a huge amount of space at a rent considerably lower than we had been paying for the tiny apartment we had leased before. However, we also understood that necessary repairs and renovations would be ongoing, and that has not been the case. We’ve been here for 18 months and, although some work has been completed, the pace has been and remains extremely slow. In fact, there has been no significant work since last February, when new attic insulation was installed. We also did considerable work on the home both before and shortly after we moved in, and we continue to maintain the yard and take care of minor maintenance.

The catch is, the landlord is my mother-in-law, and she is renting the home to us for next to nothing. Our arrangement is very informal; we do not have a lease nor even a signed tenant-at-will agreement. Under such an informal arrangement, what rights do we have, if any, as tenants? And what are her obligations as a landlord?

A: Hmmm. That’s the sound doctors make when they’re studying your x-ray and aren’t quite sure how to tell you what they’ve found. I’m very glad you finally mentioned that last detail – the fact that your landlord is your mother-in-law. It doesn’t change the law, but it does color the discussion of the issues, to say the least.

First the law. None of the conditions you’ve described —the nature of your tenancy, the presence or absence of a signed rental agreement, the reduced rent you are paying, and your relationship to your landlord—affect the landlord’s obligation to provide a habitable unit, according to the landlord-tenant attorneys I consulted. Your mother-in-law has the same obligation to you that she would have to any other tenant, which means if there are unsafe or unsanitary conditions, she is required by law to correct them. And you have the same rights as tenants that you would have in dealing with any other landlord. These include (depending on the circumstances and subject to some very specific rules) the right to withhold rent—to the extent that you are paying any rent; the option of filing a formal complaint with the local Board of Health; and/or the option of seeking a court order instructing your mother-in-law/landlord to correct the unsafe or unsanitary conditions.

This assumes that you are occupying the house separately and are not sharing the space with your mother-in-law. If you are simply sharing the house with her (or, more accurately, if she is sharing it with you), then you do not have a landlord-tenant relationship and none of the remedies available to tenants would apply. I also should point out that while some of the conditions you describe qualify as health and safety violations, not all of them do. For example, the presence of lead paint is illegal only if a child under the age of six is living in the dwelling.

The really interesting question, of course, is how (or if) you should pursue the legal remedies that are available to you. While you might feel perfectly comfortable suing your mother-in-law, your wife may not feel nearly as comfortable suing her mother. As one attorney noted, “Combine the adversary nature of a normal landlord-tenant relationship with the mother-in-law-son-in-law situation, and you have the rental housing equivalent of the perfect storm.”