Are Adult Children Regarded as Tenants

[lawfacts]

If your adult children live in a home that you own in another state, specifically Georgia, and they have never paid a penny in rent, can you order them to move out or do you have to evict them as if they are tenants?

[Mr. Knowitall]

The manner in which a tenancy is created depends upon state law. In most states a non-rent-paying adult child is not going to have a legal claim to be a tenant. However, Georgia does not follow the standard approach:

(a) The relationship of landlord and tenant is created when the owner of real estate grants to another person, who accepts such grant, the right simply to possess and enjoy the use of such real estate either for a fixed time or at the will of the grantor. In such a case, no estate passes out of the landlord and the tenant has only a usufruct which may not be conveyed except by the landlord's consent and which is not subject to levy and sale.

(b) All renting or leasing of real estate for a period of time less than five years shall be held to convey only the right to possess and enjoy such real estate, to pass no estate out of the landlord, and to give only the usufruct unless the contrary is agreed upon by the parties to the contract and is so stated in the contract.

If they won't move out voluntarily, it will be necessary to evict them.