How a “4-6 month” eviction takes 2+ years in MA

You might have heard that an eviction in Massachusetts takes 4-6 months. While this is technically an accurate average across all eviction proceedings, it's skewed by most cases settling within the first month or two, usually through mediation or payment. If a case goes to trial to have a tenant removed, it always takes 6+ months.

A tenant with no valid defense who loses every motion, hearing, and appeal can still delay the eviction repeatedly, sometimes a dozen times or more. Each delay adds weeks or months and they can add up to years.

Disclaimers:

  1. This is not legal advice. If you need legal help, consult an attorney. Free legal aid is often available through volunteer lawyer programs.

  2. While court records are public, collecting bulk data is difficult. This article is based on review of dozens of cases but does not represent every case or possible outcome.

  3. Tenants should have fair legal protections, especially against unjust eviction attempts. Nothing here is intended to suggest otherwise.

Timeline of a Prolonged Eviction

This breakdown of the length of each step assumes the landlord acts quickly while the tenant asks for more time and appeals as often and long as possible.

Steps marked with ** delay the case regardless of the legitimacy of the case or the specific request, usually before it reaches a judge for consideration, sometimes based on law. Steps marked with * only delay the case if a judge allows it. Unmarked steps are mostly mandatory once the process has gotten that far.

Phase 1: Before Mandatory Mediation (2-4 Months)

Phase 2: From Mediation to Trial and Ruling (1-14 months)

If rental assistance is approved for less than is owed, the landlord will be required to forgive the excess to receive any payment. If they receive payment, they will have to restart the eviction process from the beginning for continued non-payment.

From Ruling to Docketing of Appeal (1-7 months)

Landlord may be able to shortcut some of the transcript steps by ordering the transcript(s) in advance, usually for hundreds of dollars.

Appeals Court (7-15+ months)

Supreme Judicial Court (??)

There is much less data available about eviction case processes and outcomes in the SJC. I haven't found enough examples to confidently propose timeframes for this phase.

Execution (2+ months)

Civil Orders and Judgments

Some parts of the eviction case will usually result in an order that the tenant pay overdue and/or ongoing rent. The landlord might also file a civil case for unpaid rent or other costs and damages. Most eviction defendants are “judgment-proof”. Even with court orders for payment, landlords usually never recover unpaid rent.

Potential Partial Solutions

Here are some specific changes to the current process that could reduce the impact of the delaying tactics described above.

Disallow Consecutive Delays

Multiple motions or requests in the same phase of the case should be heard at the same time and only delay the case once. e.g. A single delay between mediation and trial for more time to file an answer, participate in discovery, draft a pre-trial memorandum, and/or pursue rental assistance. Ditto for the requests to waive appeal bond and to waive transcript costs. Ditto for the notice of appeal, motion to reconsider, motion to amend, etc.

Speed Up Scheduling

Housing Court is supposed to be faster than other courts, yet many motion hearings are scheduled 2-3 weeks out, sometimes as much as 8 weeks. When things go faster in Superior Court than Housing Court, something is probably amiss.

Single Justice Appeals

Eviction appeals could be handled by the Single Justice session of the Appeals Court, with a higher bar for basis and bond for further appeal to a panel.

Shorter Timelines

This is surely my most politically charged suggestion. While I agree that states with 1 week evictions are unreasonable, I think our year or longer is just as bad.

While I'm at it, here are a few places I think the eviction process and adjacent matters should be more explicitly defined by law, rather than subject to the non-binding opinions of hundreds of different judges. These are, admittedly, more tied to my personal experience than the rest of the article.

Author

Thanks for reading this far. My name is Clarence Risher and my friends call me Sparr. As I write this, I am about 10 months into two prolonged evictions in MA in the only home I've ever owned, which have prevented me from selling the property. It's a complex situation, but most of the complexity isn't really relevant to the evictions. I've reached the Appeal Bond Waiver Appeal step once and been through the earlier steps a few times. I anticipate at least 9 more months of delays.

I don't expect this article to make a difference soon enough to affect my own cases. I know that some tenants might use this as a guide to abuse the system. My goal here is to raise awareness of the problems in an attempt to motivate the legislature and courts to make this process more just and fair.

I can be reached at [email protected] if you have questions about my personal experience or any of the more general things I've written about here. I am also open to hearing new information that I may have overlooked or misunderstood when writing this article.