MY EXPERIENCE WITH RTDRS PHONE HEARING IN ALBERTA

Hello,

I am hope you are well? Welcome to my blog.

I am sharing this because I looked everywhere on the internet to see if anyone had shared their personal experience to prepare me and I found none.

I reached out to people who had gone through the process and it still did not prepare me for what I experienced. So let me share my experience, but before then a disclaimer: I am not in anyway saying this is how your experience will be or this is the standardized format. I hope it helps you.

This blog post will focus on just the court hearing experience. I might share the days leading up to it in another post. 

Background

I was the applicant. I applied to evict my tenant for continuous late payment of rent. We were told the process will take 3 hours but it took less than an hour (41 minutes).

On the day, I was ready with my evidence and had written what I will say when I am called to speak. My written notes had everything that had happened with references to the evidence I had presented.

The Call

The adjudicator called 2 minutes after the scheduled time. When they called, they clarified if I was the applicant and they asked me to hold on as they call the respondent. 

For some reason, I thought an admin will call myself and the respondent and then hand us over to the adjudicator but they called themselves.

When they got hold of the respondent, they added them to the call. 

They then asked us to "swear" that everything we say will be nothing but the truth and we both did. 

Then they looked at the declaration of service. If the notice was not served on time, the hearing may be cancelled or postponed. I had served the notice twice. The first one was via email to the applicant. 

Please make sure that when you serve the notice via email that you use an email read receipt tracking software to get proof that the email was read by the applicant. I use get notify but there are other softwares out there. You will need to submit confirmation of read receipt. The second service was done by leaving it at a conspicuous place on the property which was done closer to the time of hearing.

The adjudicator saw the one that was left at the house and said that was not enough time to serve the notice. I then mentioned to them that it was served via email as well and proof was sent. They saw that and they deemed the notice duly served and the hearing continued. 

They then explained that they will have the applicant speak first, then the respondent will speak next. They also explained that we should not talk when one party is speaking.

I was the first to speak and I honestly thought I was going to be asked to tell my story and then I will be crossed examined. No, that did not happen.

 The adjudicator proceeded to ask us questions based on their examination of the evidence submitted. 

The first question they asked me was, if I wanted to evict immediately or I wanted a conditional order to evict. Based on the responses and evidence, the adjudicator will then decide if they will give an order to evict immediately or a conditional order to evict.

After the first question, the adjudicator asked me more clarifying questions based on the evidence submitted and all I had to do was answer yes or no. I could also clarify. 

After they asked me all the questions they had, they asked if there was anything I would like to add. When they did,  I added some new concerns. They asked again if there was anything else and when I said no, they moved to the respondent. 

I muted my side and made some notes based on the respondents responses.

After the adjudicator was done with the respondent, they came back to me and asked me questions based on what the respondent said and I responded and clarified some of their responses.

After everything said and done, they gave their order and asked if they should file with the King's bench for me. I agreed and they filed it on my behalf.

WHAT I LEARNT: THINGS TO NOTE

Depending on the adjudicator, you can add other issues. I applied to evict my tenant based on continuous late payment of rent but I was able to add utilities and my tenant having a pet in the home.

They will not immediately evict your tenant for continuous late payment of rent if the tenant paid rent a few days late after rent was due. They will give a conditional order to evict.

If it is not in the lease, it will not hold in court. Make sure you get everything in writing and signed by your tenant. If you don't want your tenant smoking inside your home and around, please ensure it is in the lease. If you don't want your tenants to have guests staying for a certain amount of time, have it in your lease and get it signed.

The adjudicator will focus on the evidence and not hearsays. They called "she said, he said, they said" as perception and it will not hold in court.

It goes by very fast. Make sure you have all your evidence ready when you file. The adjudicator studies the evidence prior and they get questions ready to ask based on that.

When the hearing is over, both the respondent and applicant will receive the conditional order via email. This will be the unfiled copy. If RTDRS files on the applicant's behalf, they will send a filed copy to the applicant within 10 days. When you receive the filed copy as the applicant, you need to serve the filed copy to the respondent immediately.

Do not wait till they have missed another payment before you serve it, You need to serve it to your tenant/respondent before they miss another payment. I learnt that it becomes null when you serve it after they have missed a payment and in that case, a bailiff cannot help. 

You serve it before they miss a payment and when they miss a payment you serve what is called a Notice of Default. 

As I mentioned earlier, this was my experience and may not be your experience.

Hire a specialist or a lawyer if it is complicated or you don't have enough evidence.

And until next time, know that 

You are enough, you are worthy!

Learn to Live life in the present 

And know that nothing last forever so everything will be fine!

Take care of YOU, YOU are all you've got!