Does federal law protect servicemembers from delinquent rent?
Question: In a recent column, you said that a servicemember being transferred to a base in California would be required under Arizona law to pay two weeks' delinquent rent on their west Phoenix home. My understanding is that under federal law, all military personnel have protection from payment of delinquent rent. For example, if a servicemember gets called up now to immediately go to the Mexico border to assist with immigration-related efforts, the servicemember should not have to worry about paying delinquent rent. According to your resume, you were a Marine Corps JAG, so you must be familiar with this federal law.
Answer: Although I was Marine Corps JAG, I was with the First Marine Division at Camp Pendleton. Our JAG team only did court martials. The JAG officers at Base Legal assisted Marines with civil issues such as evictions and delinquent child support.
In any event, the federal law you reference is the Servicemembers Civil Relief Act ('SCRA'). The SCRA generally applies only to early termination of the lease because a servicemember is being transferred and limits the liability of the tenant to no more than 60 days of the remaining rent owed under the lease. The SCRA, however, probably doesn't apply to protect a 'holdover' tenant who occupied the west Phoenix home but didn't pay rent for two weeks.
Contact real estate attorney Christopher A. Combs at chris@combslawgroup.com.
This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Does federal law protect servicemembers from delinquent rent?
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