This article will discuss fees, liquidated damages, and other charges under Wisconsin tenant-landlord law.

Money Paid at the Time of Signing the Lease

When a tenant and landlord are signing the lease, the tenant is usually paying a substantial amount of money. (Note: This is different from the fees that may be charged as part of the rental application to a prospective tenant. The laws on earnest money deposits apply to fees charged before a lease is signed in addition to a credit check and background check.)

You know that one great-uncle, who's out of sync enough with your family culture as to be almost completely irrelevant? For us, in the world of tenant-landlord law, Rent-To-Own contracts are like that. 

We often say that Rent-To-Own contract are not covered under tenant-landlord law, but really, the "Rent" part often does fall under tenant-landlord law, even while the "to-Own" part doesn't. Wis. Stat. 704 explicitly says, "An agreement for transfer of possession of only personal property is not a lease" and ATCP 134 excludes a "contract of sale" from applying their administrative code. 

However, we live to give here at the TRC, and we think folks should understand the components of Doing This Properly. So today, I'm attempting to explain what people typically mean when they say they "Rent-to-Own," how to do it well, and what to look for when the schnitzel hits the fan.

A while back, a tenant brought in a lease saying that if they had a keg party in their home, that they would be fined $500. Now, it makes sense to us why a landlord might want to discourage keggers, (there are actually more effective ways to do so), but this taps into a complex contract law issue: this kind of charge isn't really legal. It's called liquidated damages.

We are in a season where folks are finding unexpected things on their list of security deposit deductions, but this sort of thing can happen year-round. Below, we dive into 2 hand-slappy no-nos, where landlords aren't allowed to charge in the way they think they might be able to. For the folks who read on, tenants will learn to read into parts of your lease that aren't really legal, and landlords will learn more effective ways to get what is reasonable.

One of the most frequent pieces of advice that we give at the TRC is to tell someone to read their lease. Tenants, landlords, cosigners, subletters... everyone should know what's in the legal contract that they are signing.  

We see this with different faces: occasionally, landlords come into our office hoping to evict a tenant for a clause that isn't in their lease; tenants are startled to find they are being held to a rule that they didn't know about; cosigners are shocked to discover that they can end up with a bill due to the damages of all the tenants. Here are some tips for making sure you don't miss the important parts: