Follow-up post: Thank you so much SuperS54 for your reply, you were the most helpful person I asked. Everything else is appreciated but just opinions. I went to the English section of https://www.tmm.org.tw, registered, and wrote my question. That night at 8:30 I received a call from a lawyer who answered all my questions.
In the lawyer’s opinion, that requirement was not legally enforceable, but to get my money back I’d most likely have to go to court. This would take a long time and be difficult and he wasn’t sure that I would receive all the money back, it would depend on the judge, in his opinion and experience I would but it was a grey area.
However, I ended up not having to worry about it, and not even telling my landlord about it, because my landlord agreed to find someone for me if I just stayed another month. He said he only enforced the rule when people moved out during summer months and he couldn’t find another tenant. I have had three different roommates who received their full deposits back and didn’t have that part of the contract enforced, because they left before summer. If I threaten legal action, I’m worried it will make my landlord less likely to give me my full deposit back. So I’ll just stay an extra month, and go to court afterwards if I must.
Thank you again.
