A few years ago, when my sister and I inherited 7 duplex homes throughout Western Massachusetts, we thought we would soon be all set to go on early retirements.

However, after finally looking closely at the rising cost of several maintenance issues - particularly snow. ice & slush removal throughout this relatively broad territory - and asking our trust lawyers to draft new terms requiring that all of our tenants handle their own snow removal {which was exactly how our late father handled this matter for decades}, our respective personal attorneys expressed opposite feelings about the legality of applying such a "solution" to our dilemma….

If you have any experience or knowledge about this "allegedly still evolving and confusing Massachusetts legal topic," we would be most pleased to hear from you.

You & your sister have at leasttwo types of liability that you need to be concerned about.

1. You need to check the local snow removal ordinances / by-laws for each city / town your properties are located in to determine their requirements. In 2 of the areas that my properties are in there are no requirements. In another there is an ordinance requiring the property owner to have a minimum 42" clear path on the sidewalk within so many hours of the start or the finish of a snow fall. if the sidewalk isn't properly cleared they can issue a ticket against the property. Even if your rental agreements require the tenants to do this, you as the property owner would receive the ticket.

2. Liability for someone getting hurt while using your sidewalks, walkways, stairs, driveways, etc. IMO no matter what your rental agreement says you as the property owner will ultimately be the one who gets sued when a tenant, one of their guests, a person using the sidewalk, mailman, delivery person, etc slips & falls as the result of snow or ice on your property.

IMO unless you are renting out a SFD, you as the LL / property owner should provide lawn care, snow care, ice treatment, etc for your rentals. Of course just as you factor in RE taxes, property insurance, W&S fees, common area cleaning and maintenance into rent you need to also factor in dealing with snow & ice.

Unfortunately for you & the rest of us, what worked in the past doesn't always work today. People in general & especially tenants don't want to take any responsibility for things that happened to them.

Note the local ordinances. You cannot trust tenants to do a job that you will be fined for and you don't want them to help you prevent a slip/fall liability. Single family home, it is possible to have the tenant do the yard maintenance / snow and ice removal. But you can still be held liable as the owner with the deep pockets. With a duplex, you have two tenants and if there is any shared area they use, one is not going to be happy with the amount the other does, so it becomes the LL responsibility.

If you can't do it yourselves, hire it out. Look into a contract with a company that you pay for all of them by the season instead of each storm. If you have to raise the rents to cover it, then next renewal you do that.

I think an important question to this is: what is shared for these duplexes?

In side-by-side duplexes, tenants often have their own walkways and driveways just like in a SFH. For that, I make them in charge of their own snow/ice/whatever just like I would in a SFH.

But any shared areas are very different. I hire that out to a licensed and insured snow removal place.

(I do not know MA law if there is something more specific there, sorry.)

- John...

I just can't understand why,according to some of the legal interpretations given here,a landlord can not simply write a clause into a lease that will bind a tenant to keep their own driveway and walkways clear of ice and snow.

Perhaps there is an attorney out there who will more fully explain why this is -or is not an accurate interpretation of the law.

Brooks: On that, two things:

1. You CAN write that in -- for a SFH or other location where there is no shared area. Once you have a shared area, it gets much more complex (or maybe even impossible) to put that on the tenants completely.

2. as was said, you can write whatever you want -- but people can sue for anything. Lots of people go to court every day when they had plenty of written clauses covering everything that any lawyer could think of. Some other lawyer gets paid to find a way around that. :)

- John...

Good question, nice answers.