Make your Free Delaware Eviction Notice

If you are a landlord or property owner in Delaware, you can make a Delaware Eviction Notice to communicate to renters about future legal action if they remain behind on past-due rent payments, fail to adhere to the terms of the rental agreement that they signed, or do not move out as demanded. As a result of creating this official legal notice, you can enforce your terms, while still giving your tenant(s) a chance to resolve the issue within a specified amount of time. With that in mind, in some cases, there isn't any resolution, and filing with the court is inevitable. Appropriate for all types of residential property, this Eviction Notice for Delaware can be used by any landlord with tenants in Newark, Dover, Wilmington, and in all of the other municipalities across the First State.

Normally, yes. You may draft a Delaware Eviction Notice (more specifically referred to as a 5-Day Notice to Quit) to initiate the process. That said, due to COVID-19, a few limitations and protections have been put in place for tenants who have not been able to pay rent. While the federal ban on eviction has been struck down, the state of Delaware and individual municipalities are able to create and enforce their own guidelines for evictions. Check out the ask a local landlord-tenant lawyer, if you are still unsure.

In order to remove a tenant from a rental property in Delaware, you must always deliver them a Notice of Eviction. Some of the most common situations in which you might need to use one include:

• The tenant is routinely late to pay their rent or payments have fallen behind schedule
• The tenant has caused considerable damage
• The tenant harasses or disturbs their neighbors
• The tenant is using your property for an illegal business
• The tenant violates your pet policy
• The tenant sublets your property in breach of the agreement

In addition to these examples, tenants typically can be evicted by a property owner due to other reasons that are not connected to a fault of their own. For example, if the property owner intends to move back in. Please note that the list above is not fully exhaustive and the legally acceptable reasons for tenant eviction can be different. If you've got any particular questions or concerns about Delaware eviction laws, you can connect with a lawyer.

When ready, you can click the button that says "Make document" to take a closer look at the Delaware Eviction Notice sample. In order to draft a DE Notice to Vacate online, you'll generally need to prepare the following details in advance:

• The location and description of the property
• The contact information for your tenant(s)
• How much time the tenant has to fix the situation
• How much of the rent is past due (if appropriate)
• Which of the lease terms have been violated

In the event that your tenant is not at fault, you may wish to provide more details. Using the Rocket Lawyer document tool, you have the ability to implement more personalized editing, if needed. It will be important to verify that the policies and terms mentioned in the Eviction Notice are present in the rental contract that was signed by all parties.

The law continually evolves over time and the actual eviction process can be somewhat complicated, especially for a first-timer. In some cases, there are different notice periods and other requirements depending on what the reason is for the tenant's eviction and how long they have lived in the unit. Consequently, it is highly recommended that every property owner reach out to an eviction attorney when planning to deliver a Notice of Eviction to any tenant.

Delaware Eviction Notice Laws: Del. Code Ann. tit. 25, §§ 5501(d), 5502

If you need to draft this document with Rocket Lawyer, you can follow these directions. After asking a few questions about the rental arrangement, Rocket Lawyer will generate your Delaware Eviction Notice. This route, in most cases, will be notably less expensive than finding and hiring the average provider.

If you want to understand the complete cost of eviction, you will need to consider the cost of filing court documents, attorney fees, the value of unrecovered funds, storage and/or cleaning fees, and finally, the time and money you will spend looking for a new tenant. Luckily, you do not need to pay hundreds of dollars in legal fees to draft a Notice of Eviction. Rocket Lawyer is not your average eviction form website. With us, any landlord under a Premium membership has access to up to 40% in savings when hiring an On Call attorney.

The duration of the eviction process for Delaware renters usually will depend on the notice requirements, along with the overall volume of proceedings being held concurrently. Below, you will find a general summary of Delaware notice periods:

• Non-payment of rent: 5-day notice
• Non-compliance with rental agreement: 7-day notice
• No fault of tenant: 60-day notice

After the pre-defined notice period, the actual eviction may still take from 1 to 3 months. It is important to note that with certain types of housing, for instance where rent payments are subsidized, the mandated notice period may be even longer.

While it is possible to produce a Notice to Quit by yourself, most rental property owners who go to court are represented by a lawyer. The answer will vary depending on whom you approach, but quite often some lawyers may not even agree to review documents that they did not author. A better approach to consider is to get help via attorney services at Rocket Lawyer. By becoming a Premium member, you will be able to request a document review from an attorney with landlord-tenant experience or send additional legal questions related to your DE Eviction Notice. As always, we're here for you.

When you're finished completing your Delaware Eviction Notice with Rocket Lawyer, you'll have the ability to view it anytime and anywhere. You are encouraged to engage with the document by editing it, downloading it in PDF format or as a Word file, printing it, or copying it. You must sign and date the notice before it is served on the tenant. You have a few options for serving a notice:

• Hire a process server
• Send it by certified mail
• Deliver the notice personally

As a reminder, "do-it-yourself" evictions are illegal. Property owners should not turn off utilities and services, change locks, move personal belongings, or threaten tenants in any way in order to force them out. Acting lawfully before and throughout the eviction proceedings is critical to removing tenants successfully with an official judgment from the court.