Renter (cousin) Not Leaving Property. No Official Lease. - Usa, Tennessee

Hi all,

Thanks in advance to anyone who reviews this!

TL;DR: My wife and I own a property in Tennessee with a trailer that was inherited from her father. Due to legal complications, we’ve been waiting to see if a lien on the property, which expires this year, gets renewed. In the meantime, we let her cousin stay there rent-free for a while, then for low rent, but his behavior (e.g., allowing others to live there, smoking indoors) and repeated failure to pay agreed rent have caused issues. After setting multiple deadlines, he is still living there past the latest move-out date (January 1). He now claims he will leave by February 1 but has been defensive and guilt-tripping us, despite years of patience and generosity on our part. Seeking advice on next steps to ensure he moves out, and we regain control of the property.

Property Background Information:

My wife owns (sort-of) a small plot of land with a trailer in La Follette, Tennessee. This property was inherited when her father passed a few years ago.

I say "sort-of" because the ownership situation is a bit complicated. I'll share a bit of information though in case it's relevant to the main questions. Basically, her father stopped paying the bill for his trailer many years before he died, and the bank that technically has the title also stopped asking for payment. This was all discovered in the process of trying to get the property transferred from my wife's father's name to hers. It turns out there was a 10-year lien filed against the property in 2005. This was then extended in 2015 to 2025. The estate is basically ready to be transferred to her name, but we are holding out on the off-chance that the lien does not get renewed again this year. If it does get renewed, there is likely no point in trying to do anything with the property, as the lien will have almost certainly accrued so much interest by now that it will be more than we could possibly get out of selling the property.

Background on the Situation:

We live in Pennsylvania, so after my wife's father passed, there was no way for us to easily take care of the property, and the complications above have made it impossible to just sell it. We also unfortunately hired a very incompetent/forgetful lawyer who caused the process to get to where we are now to take years when it should've taken months at most.

A cousin who my wife has never been particularly close with needed a place to live, and we needed someone to make sure the property wasn't completely falling apart or being taken over by squatters. So, we let him stay there for about a year and a half with no rent. He just had to pay his own utilities and pay the taxes. Past that, we continued the same situation plus $200/month rent for a few more years up until now. We do not have any sort of formal lease agreement, and he's been there a total of around 6 years now.

It's getting closer to when the lien will either be renewed or dropped, so it is time to start preparing for what to do with the property when that happens. We also discovered he has been doing things in the house that we do not approve of, and we want him out for those reasons as well (Other people living with him in the house, smoking in the house, etc.)

We discussed vague details of the situation with him a few months ago and asked him to start looking for a place to go. He struggled to find a place, and asked if he could stay longer for now if he found a roommate, and they would pay $1000/month total. We reluctantly agreed, as we do really need the money and that amount for a half a year or so would make a big difference for us (At this point we hadn't heard about the other stuff he'd been doing, and he hadn't caused any problems with us yet).

He found a roommate, and they paid the first half on schedule, but the second half never came, and he said the roommate left him high and dry. We told him he could stay for now for $500/month and that he should be moved out by January 1st. Then inevitably he failed to pay that, and said his brother (who was apparently staying with him in the trailer) would send payments to make up for what he'd missed so far. If I remember correctly, I think they sent 1 or 2 of the 6 $300ish payments they were supposed to make weekly to catch up on missed rent.

The Current Situation:

January 1st has of course passed now, and he is still in the house. Yesterday we simply asked when he will be moving out, and he started getting very defensive and acting like we're being evil trying to force him out of the house when he has no place to go and saying over and over that he's going to try to be out by next Friday even though he "might freeze" and he "will give you your keys by Friday even if I lose everything I have and freeze in my car you will have the keys". Please note that we never told him he had to be out by Friday. We simply asked, "What day are you planning on moving out? I need to know so that you can drop the keys off at my brother's house." He responded that he'd be out by next Friday, and we agreed to that, and then his pity party came after that for no reason.

After arguing with him a bit about him acting like that when we did him a massive favor for several years and have been more than patient with him moving out, my wife said to just be out by February 1st, and he agreed and that's where it's been left off at this point.

So that finally brings me to...
My Questions:

1. During the argument he said "...I will be out but you know this not right justify it at all you want you could always evict me but then I'll have 90 days and I paid you rent".
   1. Yes, I know this is barely legible, but this is exactly what he said lol
   2. Yes, he paid rent previously, but he is months behind on it at this point.
   3. From some Googling, I think he's wrong, and since we have no lease agreement we can pretty much evict him at any time with a much shorter notice for almost any reason. Is that true?
2. Since his new deadline is February 1st, can/should we just send an eviction notice now that gives him until February 1st to leave? Or should we just notify him that we will start eviction proceedings on February 1st if he is not out by then?
3. Would he have some sort of "squatters rights" to stay there and drag this out, or can we call the police and have him taken out if he refuses to leave after receiving the eviction notice and passing the date specified?
4. If you have any other recommendations not directly related to my questions, please do feel free to share.

Thanks so much if you got through this. I know it's a long read, but I figured you want as much information as possible in this kind of situation. Please feel free to ask questions if there's any important context I'm missing. I'm sure I missed something!