[Fire Me Boy!]

Originally Posted by JohnnyV13

Btw, Clayton, keep that demand letter terse. Mention the address of the rental, the amount of the deposit, end of the lease term, and since you are now 30 days past termination, you demand the return of your full deposit.

Cut n' paste the statute you posted before. Say you expect a prompt response, and sign it.

If you still get no response, you choices are to retain a lawyer or file the case yourself as I said before. The first thing the lawyer will do is do the demand letter thing again, because often people will respond to a law firm letterhead. That should cost less than one billable hr, and the demand should be for more than the deposit to pay for that bill.

If they ignore that, and if it were me, I'd file my own small claims action. Depends how comfortable you'd be doing that. Judges in small claims have very truncated procedures in which they pretty much just ask you the pertinent facts, ask for facts from the other side, then render a decision (of course, after you file the paperwork and pay court costs).

I meantime small claims sometime back. I'm not sure about Missouri, but have been advised in SC that judges there don't like lawyers involved in small claims.