Woman here. Made the mistake a few months back of moving in with a male partner too soon. He’s Taiwanese. He paid all the move-in fees on a rather costly apartment.
Shortly after, he committed what I consider to be an incident of domestic violence- punching a wall and breaking a door with lots of shouting and intimidation. Lots of mental health issues and massive amounts of debt came to light, and he moved out on his own accord within a month. I’m not sure where he lives now, but I’m paying the rent on my own which is much more than I care to pay but manageable.
He’s now threatening to “take further action” to recoup his money from deposit and move-in fees. I’m not sure what the best move is here as I don’t really speak Chinese and don’t want to get into a legal battle I can’t afford. I’m honestly terrified of this guy, he’s huge and manipulative and could easily damage my work life, relationship with landlord etc. as well as beat the shit out of me. Would a restraining order be out of question here? TIA
You need a lawyer. This is my lawyer and he speaks English. Free consultation. Give him a chat. He won’t steer you wrong. Good guy to know, personable.
Calling him doesn’t mean you necessarily need to get into a legal battle. It’s just about covering your ass and protecting yourself, legally, financially, and physically.
If ya ask me, one has to be a special kind of delusional if you think breaking the landlord’s shit and moving out early entitles one to the deposit. I think Mr Kuo will have fun with this one.
Ask him also his opinion on contacting the landlord
And having him come over to see the damage. Perhaps a new lease can be drawn up with only you on it and just your deposit while the landlord deducts the damage from the other party’s deposit and return any left over to him
Hopefully you can remove this person from your life
Getting in bed with the wrong partner is something many of us have done and it’s always been hard to fix Some harder than others
I just wanted to provide a couple of resources that seem relevant.
The Garden of Hope foundation has an explanation of the 113 domestic violence hotline as well as protection orders: https://www.goh.org.tw/en/p5-help.asp
In some larger police stations there is a dedicated Foreign Affairs Police section with officers that speak English. Here is the link for Taipei:
Maybe one could hope the police would take a more serious view of potential domestic violence than they sometimes seem to in other cases where threats of violence etc. have transpired and the person complaining does not seem to have any particular influence.
Assault is only a crime if the victim presses charges, if he/she doesn’t, the prosecutor can’t proceed. I’m not sure if there are other domestic violence related laws.
Also is there any documentation of the threat, use of weapons, etc? You can press charges based on the threat of violence alone. But don’t expect serious jail time… because Taiwan isn’t the US and they don’t jail people here for any significant time unless it’s serious, actual felony level stuff (like murder and attempted murder, drugs, illegal guns, etc.). Now if he threatened you with a gun or replica gun, we’d have something here.
Right, this wasn’t an assault but it definitely was the preliminary behavior that leads up to it. I don’t necessarily care to press charges for the incident- just want to keep him away from me and protect myself if he tries to intimidate me or embarrass me into paying him. My worry I guess is that if I bring it to someone’s legal attention, maybe the law will side with him as there’s no documentation and I’m foreign. We’ll see how the legal consult goes!
More like he wants his share of the deposit back as he is not living there anymore
And I think he should be given that minus cost of damage
And he should not be on the lease anymore
If she can’t work out something with the landlord
She should move
