How to evict a tenant who will not leave: the five routes and their real time limits

Quick answer: the right path depends on what you can prove and what you are claiming. With a lease and unpaid rent, the monitorio procedure applies, the summary order to pay that law 21.461 added to law 18.101, under which the tenant has ten calendar days to pay or object and, if they do not, eviction is ordered. If the lease has simply expired or you want to end it, the route is termination notice (desahucio), and there the time limits are much longer than people think: four months from notification of the claim, plus two months for every full year of occupancy, up to twelve. And if there was never a lease at all, it is not a tenancy case. What is never appropriate, in any scenario, is changing the locks or cutting off utilities.

Most cases that go badly do not go badly because of the tenant. They go badly because the owner chose the wrong procedure. Choosing wrong means months lost and a claim dismissed with costs, with the occupant still inside and now aware that you got it wrong.

First: identify which of the five scenarios is yours

The most expensive mistake of all. Bringing a precario claim against a former tenant. If there was ever a lease, even a verbal one, even if it expired years ago, there is no precario, because precario assumes the occupation is by mere tolerance and with no prior relationship at all. The Supreme Court has said so repeatedly, and we cover it in detail in our guide to precario proceedings.

The monitorio procedure, step by step

It is the fastest route available today, and it was designed specifically for unpaid rent, common expenses and utility charges.

• The claim is filed with a lawyer, attaching the lease and an exact breakdown of what is owed by item and period.
• The court reviews the filing and, if it meets the requirements, immediately issues the order requiring payment.
• A court process server notifies the tenant.
• Ten calendar days run for the tenant to pay or raise a defence.
• If the tenant does not pay, does not appear and does not object, they are ordered to pay and eviction is ordered within a term that cannot exceed ten days from when the ruling becomes final.
• If the tenant pays only part, the procedure continues for the balance.

The flip side is that if the tenant objects within the deadline, the monitorio procedure ends there and the case has to proceed through ordinary declaratory proceedings. That is why the quality of the claim matters so much: a poorly itemised debt or a badly attached lease is an invitation to object.

Studies covering the first years of the law show an average of close to one hundred and four days between filing the case and the ruling that orders eviction, against the seven or eight months it used to take. That is a real improvement, and it is still longer than almost everyone expects. The details of this law are in our guide to the ley Devuélveme mi casa.

Termination notice, and why it takes so much longer

Here is the surprise most owners get when the tenant owes no rent at all and simply wants their house back.

In month-to-month leases or leases of indefinite duration, the landlord can only end them through judicial termination notice, and the tenant has a term to hand back the property of four months counted from notification of the claim. That term increases by two months for every full year the tenant has occupied the property, capped at twelve months.

And that is the term to hand back the property, counted from notification, which itself comes after preparing and filing the claim. In fixed-term leases of one year or less, the landlord must also seek restitution through the courts, and the tenant likewise has four months from notification.

The practical consequence. If your tenant pays on time and you simply want the house back, plan in months, not weeks. That is why, in practice, many of these situations are better resolved by negotiating an exit with a set deadline and a capped payment than by litigating for twelve months.

What you cannot do, even if you are completely in the right

• Change the locks. This is self-help dispossession, and it gives the occupant grounds for a claim against you.
• Put their belongings out on the street. Besides the above, this exposes you to liability for those belongings.
• Cut off the water, electricity or gas. This is the mistake that can end up as a criminal matter, and we cover it in our guide to cutting off a tenant's utilities.
• Enter the property without authorisation, even if you are the owner and hold a key. While the lease is in force, use of the property belongs to the tenant.
• Hold on to the tenant's belongings as security for payment of the rent.

All of these have something in common: they turn a case you were going to win into a case with two fronts, and you will lose the second one.

What to prepare before you see a lawyer

• The lease, with its addenda and extensions. If it was verbal, anything that proves the relationship: transfers, messages, emails, receipts.
• An itemised account of the debt, period by period, separating rent, common expenses and utility charges.
• Current title registration in your name.
• Dated communications in which you asked for payment or restitution.
• The condition of the property, with dated photographs, especially if there is damage. This supports a precautionary order for early restitution.
• If there is a co-debtor or guarantor, their details, since the claim can be directed against them too.

Frequently asked questions

I do not have a written lease. Can I still sue?

Yes. A lease can be verbal and proven by other means: regular transfers, messages that mention the rent, witnesses, receipts. What changes is that the monitorio procedure becomes harder to sustain, because it rests on documents, and you will most likely have to proceed through ordinary declaratory proceedings instead. What is not appropriate is filing a precario claim to sidestep the problem of proof.

The tenant has left the house wrecked. Do I have to wait out the whole case?

Not necessarily. Law 21.461 introduced a precautionary order for early restitution precisely for cases where the property was partly destroyed or rendered unusable through the tenant's act or omission. You need to establish a serious presumption of the right being claimed, and the court can require security. Documenting the condition of the property from the start is what makes this route viable.

Can I sue the guarantor together with the tenant?

If the lease includes a joint and several co-debtor or a guarantor, they can be sued together with the tenant, and in practice that is what produces results when the tenant has no assets. It is worth checking how that clause was drafted, because many do not actually create genuine joint and several liability.

The tenant left but took none of their belongings. Can I remove them?

Not on your own, however obvious it may seem. Record the condition and the date, communicate in writing, and channel the restitution through the courts. Removing the belongings without a court order is exactly the kind of act that later gets used against you in negotiations.

What if the tenant sublet to someone else?

If the lease prohibited it, that is grounds for termination. And for the eviction you have to take the subtenant into account, since they are the one physically in the property. Leaving them out of the claim is a mistake that comes back to bite you at the eviction stage.

I sold the leased property. Does the new owner have to honour the lease?

It depends on how the lease was recorded. A lease granted by public deed, and even more so if it is registered, is binding on the buyer. A lease in a private document normally does not bind the buyer. It is one of the first things checked in a title study before buying a property with occupants inside.

I bought the house at auction and it is still occupied. Is it the same case?

No. There are mechanisms within the enforcement proceedings themselves for obtaining physical possession, and the situation changes depending on who is occupying it. It is covered in our guide to a house bought at auction.

How we handle it

The first step is a short, concrete conversation to establish the scenario, because that determines everything else: what was signed, what was paid, since when the tenant has occupied the property, and what you are claiming. With that it becomes clear whether the route is the monitorio procedure, termination notice, termination for breach, or something other than a tenancy case altogether.

We then build the file with the debt itemised period by period, which is what supports the monitorio procedure, and we check whether early restitution should be requested. When there is a guarantor or co-debtor, the claim is directed against them from the outset, not later.

The litigation itself falls to our civil litigation team. And if it turns out along the way that the property has a title or registration problem, which happens more often than you would think, we resolve it with a title study before the tenant can use it as a defence.

Send us the lease, if there is one, and an itemised account of what you are owed, and we will tell you which route applies, what a realistic timeline looks like, and what can be requested from the very first filing.