My question involves landlord-tenant law in the State of: Missouri
I signed the lease with two friends June 1st 2010. It was a 12 month lease. About December time, these two roommates both want to go their separate ways, so I find two new roommates. The landlord agrees to let them move in, and they sign a new lease with me that goes until June 1st of 2011.
The landlord says that because the first two people moved out, they for fitted their share of the deposit (217$ each). She says that the two new people do not have to pay a deposit.
The rent is 650 a month. Split three ways, that's 217$. We paid our rent, except for one roommate who neglected to pay his rent for the last two months of the lease. He actually ended up packing his stuff and leaving while the other roommate and I were gone. We have yet to hear from him.
Anyway, the landlord gets mad and says that we have to be out by May 15th, but she does not inform me of this. My stuff is already out, I found another place to live. However, the landlord never informed me of this agreement between her and the other roommate. So, I paid full months rent and he only got to live there for 15 days. She kicked him out 15 days before the lease was up.
She also allowed the new tenants to put their stuff in the apartment on the seventeenth. So, did she break the lease agreement? Are we entitled to half of the rent, considering she only let him stay there for half of the month? Should we even have had to pay rent because she let the new tenants put their stuff in the apartment before the lease was up?
All of this was done without my permission. She even demanded that I go over there and clean the apartment or she would take pictures and take me to court. I cleaned it.
While I was there cleaning (seventeenth of May), I noticed that the garage was full of the new tenants stuff and a puppy. There were painters coming in and out, and there were carpet cleaning people.
No one bothered to ask me about any of this, and my name is on the lease. Am I entitled to half the rent back?
Also, I have asked her twice now for a list of everything she spent the deposit on including receipts. I have yet to get it. I told her today that if I do not get half the rent and the remaining deposit back, I will take her to court. She told me to do whatever I half to do.
Am I in the right here? I mean, should I have had to pay for an entire month if we were not able to use the apartment for the entire month? Especially since the new tenants had their stuff in there by the seventeenth?

