My question involves an eviction in the state of: Texas
We moved into a rental house in mid April. Our landlord is a woman that lives in a different city a ways away. When we first moved in we met her husband at the house to pay all of the deposits, first months rent and application fees with money orders. On the 30th of may we purchased a money order (my husband thought a money order to pay rent would be a good show of faith) and on the first it was sent to the address given to us. Around June 14th we received a call from a pissed off landlord stating that she would be driving down to start eviction proceedings because she had just checked her P.O. box and all of the rent checks were there but ours. We explained to her that we purchased it on the 30th and watched the mailman pick it up on the 1st and she acted as though we were liars and generally had a nasty attitude towards us. We were dumbfounded and immediately called the number on the money order to make sure it hadn't been cashed, then we called and gave her the receipt number so that she could also call and check to see that it was outstanding. We then pulled up our lease contract and double checked the address that had been given to us to send our rent to. As soon as we got to the zip code she stopped us...she had given us the right P.O. box number, but the wrong zip code.
She apologized and gave us the correct address as well as told us that if it hadn't arrived by June 30th that we should call and cancel it and go through the process of getting it refunded and reissued to her. (it costs money to cancel, and have a money order refunded...$15 that apparently she was expecting us to pay for her mistake). She told us that she would check the post office at the zip code she had mistakenly given us and call back...she never called back.Well before the 30th it arrived back in our mailbox with a yellow sticker saying that it was undeliverable because the address didn't exist. We then dropped the entire, unopened envelope (with the sticker still on it) into another envelope and sent it back her way. We called her the next day to let her know we had gotten it back and had remailed it to her. The 30th of June rolled around and my husband went to the bank to get another money order but I warned him to call and make sure she had received the re-sent one first. She stated that yes, she had gotten it a few days after it was res-sent and was told by my husband that he was at the bank right then to get a money order for July and she thanked him and that was that.
On the 7th of July we receive another call from her stating that she has yet again not received our rent and wanting to know if we mistakenly sent it to the incorrect address again. We double checked and we had definitely sent it to the correct address. We told her to let us know if it showed up and once again we called to make sure the money order had not been cashed, provided her with the receipt info so that she herself could check and suggested that maybe she was being a little rash as the July 4th holiday could have choked up the mail. We called her on the 17th when we had not heard from her yet, then again on the 20th and got voicemail both times. She finally called back on the 22nd and she was very nasty to us. She said she was at the post office again and that it was still not there. She wanted to know the tracking number. We explained that we sent it in a regular envelope through regular mail and we thought it was a strange thing for her to ask for because she had received a money order from us before and knew that it was sent in a regular envelope with no tracking number. My husband began to suggest for the second time that we use a different method (such as paypal) and she cut him off by saying "thanks" in a nasty tone and just hanging up. We immediately sent her an email apologizing for the situation and reminding her that mail was the way she insisted we pay her (we had suggested paypal or meeting her husband and giving it directly to him) and stating that this was just as stressful for us as it was for her and could she please get back to us so we could work out a solution to keep this from happening again.
That was 2 days ago. We haven't received a phone call or response from her. The money order still has not been cashed and we call our local post office to make sure it wasn't sitting in a bin somewhere forgotten about. We are now at our breaking point....we just spent a lot of money only two months ago to move in here, we have an 18 month old daughter and we don't want to worry about being evicted and thrown out onto the street, we want her to have a home, we spent our own money upgrading the porch lights, planting flowers, upgrading the shower rod and towel rods and even painted two rooms (with permission). We are sick with worry that her lack of communication means she is trying to evict us as we type this as she was keen to do it the first time this happened. Are we in the wrong here? What do we do? Does she have grounds to stand on if it comes to eviction? Help!!!

