united-states rental-property rent
Landlord claims I missed a rent payment from over a year ago, I don&#39;t have easy way to confirm a payment from that far back. What are my obligations?
<p>I'm renting a room from a person, not a large organization; it's a monthly rental.  He claims he just saw I had missed my monthly rent payment from April of last year.  I don't have an easy way to check back more then a year ago to see if I made the payment.</p>
<p>Now realistically I don't see this going to court one way or another; I have every intent to figure things out and if I really did miss a payment pay it now.  However it makes me curious what <em>is</em> the legal obligation in such a case?  Is my inability to definitively prove I gave him money a year ago make me responsible if he says he doesn't show the electronic payment on his end?  Or is there some sort of statue of limitations on his being able to claim a missed payment?</p>
<p>I live in Maryland.</p>

<p>If you want to be argumentative about it, the burden of proof is on the person making the accusation. This also means the burden of production is, too. Underlying the whole matter is a claim that you've engaged in &quot;breach of contract,&quot; namely failing to pay rent. Your legal obligation is to not engage in contract fraud nor breach of contract. You are to exercise due diligence in resolving any breach of contract.</p>
<p>You may ask the lessor to provide evidence in support of the claim while admitting that you have difficulty looking that far back into the issue. The idea here is to &quot;work with&quot; the lessor rather than immediately taking an adversarial stance. Normal people become very disgruntled by those taking an immediate adversarial approach rather than seeking to work with the other person to resolve the dispute.</p>
