I Want to End Our Lease, but My Roommate Might Not Want To

[lcffemt]

My question involves a roommate in the State of California:

In May of 2008 I moved to California with my friend who is in the marines and stationed here. We found an apartment to live in, and planned on us living there together, and he was planning on getting married this fall. The verbal agreement we had was that I would be paying most of the rent and bills, because he doesn't have a lot of extra money due to credit cards and a car loan, and poor budgeting. Once he was married and obtained BAH (a military allowance for housing), I would live rent free, with he and his wife, for a couple of months to build up my savings which has been depleted. Then I would start to pay rent again.

Well here is what has happened. I am paying all the bills: rent, utilities, and everything in the apartment is mine (except his clothes). I am his power of attorney, and sold a car for him that was back home before I moved here. I had transferred the title in my name, and then my mom who has my POA, finished the sale after I moved here. The car was sold for $2,700. The money from the sale of the car was to go to me ($2,000), and I gave my friend money to pay his car loan ($400) and took money out for the bed I had bought for him ($200) and wrote him a check for $100. The $2000 pretty much paid up the debt he owed me, before the rental here in CA.

Now he is out of money again... and did I mention his fiance now lives with us. He constantly leaves his dirty clothes through the apartment, uses my toiletries, and expects me to continue paying all the rent and utilities, and now our agreement of me living rent free when he gets BAH is no longer, I still need to pay $400. I am put up with the constant BS with he and his fiance. They always leave the lights on, AC runs all the time, they hardly clean up. They hog my sofa and only want to watch what they want to watch on my TV. He smokes pot despite being in the military, but doesn't care. I know I could go to his command about all this, but I don't want to mess up his military career.

I am ready to move out and have a place to go, but I am worried about his anger management issues. I paid the security deposit, and am afraid of what might happen when it is time to leave. And, when we talked about this before in a fight, he said he wouldn't leave the apartment. He also threatened to take me to court over selling the car, even though he told me too, and I have POA.

What should I do?

[panther10758]

You can find CA rental guidelines here

[jk]

whse names are actually on the lease?