My question involves small claims court in the state of: Iowa

I and two others rent a small house in Iowa, our lease is from July 01 2007 to July 31st 2007. In the course of this year we have split the bills evenly (33-33-33). We are all of college age and I described how we did things the previous year including talk of parties, late weekend nights, friends crashing at the place, etc. No problems were brought up then.

Roommate 1: Terryl
Roommate 2: Sarah
(Not real names)

Both have refused to pay the past 2 months bills and this upcoming month's bills.

Sarah moved out of the house in August or September to move in with her boyfriend. She continued to pay rent and utilities despite almost never staying at the house.

Terryl lived in the home and shared his burden as well.

I requested May and June's bill split without response from either. Yesterday I demanded the bill amount and both have created a pact to not pay me (Something on the order of $380 per person by the end of the lease). There was no written agreement to split bills, only a verbal agreement and a precedence that we have done it the whole year.

Sarah says as she has not lived there she should not have to pay bills. If that was the case, I would have moved out in August as well as I could not support 50% of the bills throughout the school year.

Terryl and I have not gotten along at all, and he has never told me when I did something that bothered him. He would simply go about passively aggressively punishing me after the fact.

Examples include:
-After having a get together with friends that went into the AM hours he would open his door and blare the music as loud as possible when we went to sleep. I get the fact that we were too loud... after the fact. He's also called the cops on us instead of opening the door and asking us to be quiet. Let me emphasize he has NEVER verbally requested anything of me. He expects me to just 'know'.

-He dislikes my friends so when a few of them would go for a smoke break he would lock them out of the house quietly then slip back into his locked room.

I repeatedly asked him to tell me specifically what bothered him when I bothered him, to no avail. He simply states he wants 'common courtesy and respect' which I have pointed out on many occasions is different between my views and his. I have not changed any habits since living in this house with the previous roommates and we all got along fine. I stress this, but he refuses to tell me when something bothers him (or what for that matter).

In addition, he states because I have often (maybe a dozen times this past year) had many friends over to play video games (having many computers plugged in at one time) that I should pay a larger portion of the utilities. I have pointed out that having a computer plugged in for 12 hours costs less than $0.25. On less than 5 occasions friends of mine have showered at the house, including one who was evicted from his house in a state of emergency (flood). My friend stayed one night until he could find a more permanent place to stay. Finally, once a friend of mine had done two loads of laundry at our house as she could not do laundry at hers because of some issues I cannot remember now.

None of these problems were brought up at the time (Months ago). They are being brought up now in a hope to get out of paying these bills. All the bills are in my name. I have told them I will take it up with small claims court but they both believe they will win and tell me to go ahead and try.

Really grinds my gears because they will at the end owe me something close to $380 each, and I had offered before I heard about this pact for them to each pay $300 so I didnt have to hunt them down after the lease ended this month.