Roommate Agreement
Sort of like a “lease light”.
So, I’m all freaked out about having a roommate, right? I mean, at one point after college, I said that I’d never have another roommate unless she was sleeping with me. I’d gotten tired of the whole sharesy-waresy thing. Of course, that was from living in a ten-foot by fifteen-foot cell in a college dorm with some of the strangest people on Earth. And, yes, I’m sure they said the same thing about me. So, anyway, I fell back to the comfort zone of any good Republican-turned-Libertarian and started Googling for roommate agreements. Mostly I got things from college campuses, which did little to ease my tension. These, for the most part, were nice, little “contracts” that said everyone would play nice and work things out without killing each other. Sure, in college, probably a very helpfull thing, but for me, not so much. But, finally, I found a legal site that had the whole deal.
An interactive form to customize an agreement tailored to meet specific needs. It had standard clauses loaded with lovely, conservative legalese. There were places to customize clauses and even add in custom “house rules”. Things about pets, quiet hours, parties and even over-night guests. Well, I filled out my little form in all its anal retentive glory, carefully considering each and every question. I finally get to the end and it displays on a new page, but, wait, only the first few sections. Then, it demands $12.50 for the entire document, with changes for up to a week. What!?! So, after doing some more searching, my need for boundries won out and I paid the $12.50. I got my document, which I edited with some helpful suggestions from friends, and we reached our agreement.
But, then I got thinking. Now, regular readers of this blog know what happens when I start thinking: TROUBLE. So, I got more and more irritated with having had to shell out $12.50 for this, basically, boiler-plate document. Finally, what I decided to do was run it again, but with all the possible options, and save it to my harddrive as a template. Now, if I ever do this again, I can just pick and choose my clauses and be all set. But, that wasn’t good enough, so I’ve made it even more generic, but removing my actual address and both our actual names, and saved it in three formats: Word, Rich Text and Open Office. And, now, I bring it to you, faithful readers, for your use. Enjoy!
Roommate Agreement Template
