My boyfriend is being screwed over by his roommate regarding the lease.... HELP!??

my boyfriend and a friend had decided to get an apartmnent together in june with a one year lease.
they know eachother through one of my friends and they seemed to get along.
well the rent was 780, ($390 each) not including the utilities, and heat and stuff like that.

my boyfriend's roomate had broken up with his girlfriend and decided that he wanted to move out and break the lease.

he went to the leasing office (he went around the end of december) and they worked it out so they would have someone else fill their apartment by the end of january.
they just had to pay an extra month's rent.

they both agreed. so instead of staying until the office found people to fill their apartment, his roommate moved out and moved in with his new girlfriend.
the office has still not found anyone to fill the apartment and its march already.
his roommate cooperated and continued to pay half of the rent but since my boyfriend was the only one staying here, he payed the full utilities bill.

now this month, he refused to pay the rent saying that he was not living there and was not responsible for the bill....

but his name is still on the lease!
can my boyfriend take him to court and try to get the money for half the rent?
he's really worried that there will be an eviction on his credit and he doesnt want that to happen.

what should we do? and how do we handle this?
thank you SO MUCH!

Your boyfriend and his roommate are still legally bound for the rent, unless he pays it and then its difficult to contest it later. Even if the other person moved out he didnot end his responsibility as co-renter to your boyfriend. What ever agreement was made to the management company means diddly. They just made an arangement of "good faith" to keep someone renting the apartment so they wouldn't have any problems. The room mate still owes for the utilities or half unless he has something in writing that says otherwise, and it doesn't even matter if your boyfriend is the only one on the various utility bills. By signing the lease he in effect agreed to use the apartment , payrent and take care of the utilities together.
If it were me I would put the rent monies into an escrow account in a bank, continue to pay into the account each month and notify the management company of what my intentions are and since they have not found a suirable renter tell them the address of your roommate still and they can collect from both of you. I would send the same information to my roommate and tell him also by certified letter. I would then take him to pro-se court or small claims court for the half balance of the utilities and get a copy in writing from the utilities of an estimate of what the bills will approximately be. Weather they are electricity, heating, telephone etc. You might have a problen with the telephone in proving he made calls without requesting a readout of all calls made from the apartment. Use any and all, Good luck

Judge Judy!

If his name is still on the lease, read through the lease. The first step I would do is to call and get some legal advice. But a lease is a legal document you can use in court, and if he still has his name on it, then he is liable for everything that the lease states.

If you don't want to go through all of this quite yet, get him to call and explain the arrangements to the rental office and they may be able to work something out. I wouldn't trust anything this guy said to the rental office. The rental agency may be able to take him to court.

he was the only one using the utilities... why should they be split?

if the 'split' of rent is spelled out on the lease, all your bf needs to do is pay his obligation... and the other person is responsible to meet his half of the lease agreement.

Do you have any intellectual friends this guy doesn't know? I've done this before...get them to look up some words on the internet that deal with law issues and have your friend make a phone call saying that he's a lawyer your b/f called. This may scare that guy into paying still. The utilities you might not be able to do anything with unless his name is on them also, but try that out first! Worked for me

what he can do is pay the full rent each month then sue the roommate for half in small claims

Yes you could most definitely take him to court. The only way he would get an eviction is if he refused to move out and did not pay the rent. An eviction is to legally remove someone if they aren't paying there rent and they don't want to move. The only thing that might happen if he moves out and doesn't finish the lease is it will go on both there credit reports.

Your boyfriend should get proactive and find himself a new roommate. Yes, he can sue the old roommate, but there is a something in the law called "mitigation of damages". This means you cannot collect money from someone for damages that you could have prevented. Your boyfriend has known for 2 months that he needed a new roommate. He should not sit around waiting for others to solve that problem.

When he sues to the old roommate, he can sue for the rent and utilties.

EDIT - impersonating a lawyer is a CRIME in most states of the US.