I Want My Money Back!

I have come to the conclusion that if I have to rent anymore, I will go crazy. So far nothing too horrible has happened at our new place (with the exception of blinds that have not been cleaned since 1993 and are growing virtually irremovable fuzz). The problem is the continuing drama with our old landlord. Somehow she has managed to top two years of us having to harass her to fix the simplest things around the house, and put up with her incompetent (and frightening) maintenance man who managed not to fix anything correctly, when he actually did get around to messing with it. When I gave notice that we would not be renewing our lease (more than 30 days in advance, mind you), she dropped off a copy of a new lease with a note saying we had to sign it since we did not give 60 days notice as required by the previous lease. Now, that lease did say 60 days notice was required, but it also said that the lease was not automatically renewable, and said nothing about what would happen if we gave less notice than that. I wrote a polite letter pointing that out to her, and sent it to her with the new lease unsigned (and a huge fear that she would try to abscond with our security deposit). How right I was. Not only did she charge us for raking our lawn (not required by our lease), and for the cost of replacing light bulbs that were burned out when we moved in, but she also charged us $500 (half a month's rent) for giving insufficient notice. Plus, she put a note on the form saying she could have charged us a whole month's notice but was choosing not to. Now that is just a dead give away that she was up to something fishy. And of course, she has no legal right to withhold that money from us. After spending hours on the internet looking up laws, statutes, and the like, I wrote her a nice note pointing that out, and informing her that we were aware of our right to file a complaint against her with the Department of Consumer Protection, as well as take her to small claims court for double the amount she wrongfully withheld plus legal fees. I even gave her 7 days to return the money. 10 days later, nothing. Now I am going to have to figure out how to take someone to small claims court. If I had wanted to be this involved with the law, I would have gone to law school. Just my luck that Ann still has a semester and a half to go. Where are your friends when you need them? :)