Who's the Ass-Hat here?

Sally and I are same sex partners. We got rid of our bulimic and alcholic roommates and wanted to start fresh.

I placed an ad in the paper, and before we even had anyone darken our door for an interview, I said the following:

Sally and I have the lease on the apartment. I travel around the U.S. and when I'm in town, I stay with her. That can be for multiple days, and then weeks/ months go by when I am only there to drop her off from my place in another state.

Then, when the applicants came over, BOTH Sally and I were present. We repeated the exact same thing....LIVE! We got smart this time, and I wrote up a FOUR PAGE ROOMMATE RENTAL AGREEMENT, which stipulates what their obligaitions were and ours.

Number 3 of the agreement states: The rent and utilities shall be divided up by thirds and paid within 7 days upon display.

In order to live in our apartment, they had to read this agreement, OUT LOUD, with us, and Sally, myself and they HAD to sign it.

Simple enough? Do we have any difficulty understanding yet?

So, the month of April (when Bill moved in), I was there most of the time (against my wishes), because I didn't want our soon-to-be-ex, alcoholic roommate, Kevin, to beat the living tar out of him.(He was violently Alpha male) Big surprise...Kevin was on the best behavior of his life and suckered Bill into believing that he's a great bloke.

Then, the first week of May, Sara moved in and I was there to physically help Sally move from one room to the next, and because I needed to work in the city.

All of the bills are in my name, and as had been explained to the roomies, when they came in; I'd leave them on the counter,and they could write me a check for one third. I pay for Sally to stay there as she's on a stipend at work and can't afford it on her own. I also have a home in another state.

Time comes and goes, and there's still no checks.

Then Sara, she of the prodigious note writing, leaves a 8 1/2 by 11 'note', saying that since there are "four people living in the apartment now, Bill and I feel that we need to split the rent and utilities and supplies by one quarter!"

What the fuck!!!???

Rent is already an abysmally low $300 per person (L180) and all of the utilities are on a payment plan: whether we turn on the gas, cable or electric, they are at a set rate. So, if we watch TV 24/7, we pay $xxx; if we never watch cable, it's $xxx.

I wrote back to her, that I am paying all of Sally's bills, so essentially I have the complete right to be there, as often as I want, and that it was the transition period between roommates that mandated me being there as much as I had been, for the past month.

Mind you, Sara had ONLY been there 13 days when she wrote this note.

So, the following morning, the 14th, Sally and I wake up to Sara and Bill scurrying out of the apartment, when we get up, and another note left on the counter.

Essentially, they not only feel that Sally has to pay her share of the rent, too, but...but....they suggested that she take over 100% of the cleaning duties (a 4 hour job that's currently divided evenly amongst the roommates) to equal out her share of the rent.

Let's do the math:

Sara $300
Bill $300
Me $300
Sally $400 at $100/week cleaning charge for the amount that a maid service would charge to clean our large appartment.

It gets better....or worse!

Bill, then added that he thinks that we should keep track of when people are home and when they aren't and they pay the amount of rent...according to when they are home!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Have you ever heard of anything so fucked up as that??????

So, if he's gone for a month, on vacation, he feels that he shouldn't pay ANYTHING, and that the balance should be shouldered by the other roommates.

Hmmmmmmmmmmmm......let me think about this.....NO FUCKIN' WAY, DICKHEAD!!!!

With all of the house-sitting that I do for clients, I can just imagine them calling up their mortgage company and utilities and saying, "Uh, Hi. I've been in Russia/Thailand/Phoenix for the past month and a half so I don't need to pay my bills, because I wasn't there."

Or worse, asking ME to pay their bills, since after all, I was the one house-sitting and living there, so I should, of course, be responsible for paying.

Both of us have the worst upset stomaches that you can possibly imagine and we both feel like we've been made to be free-loaders at our own home.

Forget the fact that we have over $3000 in money invested in microwaves, TV's, furniture and pots and pans for EVERYONE'S USE! When I brought this up to Bill, before he scampered off to work, he shrugged and said, that he and Sara both had furniture, so if the place was empty, they could outfit it!

And the big irony of this all....Sara wanted to have a "Roommate Dinner", which she controlled and orchestrated and she kept asking Sally why I couldn't be there. Sally barely wanted to attend last night, and neither Sara nor Bill have shown the tiniest bit of shame/remorse/or cluefulness about how insulting their behaviour has been to us.

To top it of, Sara asked Sally when I'd be coming over again, and when she said, "Not until this weekend (Sally's birthday)", Sara was genuinely surprised and said, "Gee, that must be hard to not see each other."

Well, Bitch, if you and Bill weren't so anal, that wouldn't be a problem, now, would it?

So, tomorrow, Tuesday, I'm coming armed with the SIGNED RENTAL AGREEMENT, which states in no uncertain terms, that ALL UTILITIES AND RENT ARE TO BE SPLIT [b]THREE[/b] ways, NOT FOUR. And that in over 8 places of the agreement, it always mentions Sally and I as a couple, with BOTH of our signatures at the end.

With all the shitty roommates we've had in the past, we've never, ever been made to feel guilty for living in our home AND when some of our roomies have had partners, we've ENCOURAGED them to bring their S.O.'s over so that they both felt at home.

I'm telling you this right now, after I bushwack them---separately---tomorrow after they come home from work, they have a choice:

1)Believe that I will not, indeed, be living there full-time, with this just being my busy season

OR

2)Give their 30 day notice and we'll replace them.

We're so used to the parade of roomies, that changing these two tight wads is as easy as blowing your nose.

I could see if the bills reflected a four person usage, but they don't. I could see if I interferred with their getting to work on time in the morning or getting ready for bed at night or taking up refrigerator space of any other space in the apartment.

I have ONE jacket in Sally's closet.
I have ONE drawer in her room.
I have NO space in the bathroom, by choice, and
I have NO space for anything in the kitchen, by choice again.

Can you imagine how humiliating it would be, for Sally to come to HER home, where she is on the lease and own's all the furniture, and have Sara and Bill say to her, "Say, Sal, we're having friends over this weekend, so can you clean the place by Friday?"

That would mean that with my part of the $300 rent and Sally's $400 dollars worth of cleaning, we'd be paying $700 to live....in OUR apartment!

Let the shit hit the fan tomorrow....grrrrr arrrgggghhh!!!

Question: are we in total denial of a problem here or is one being manufactured by people who previously lived alone in their apartment and are now having difficulty adjusting to shared living?

What are OUR rights?