Former Roommate Is Squatting In House After The Lease Expired And All Other Roommates Have Moved Out. Landlord Has Sent Threatening Texts To All Previous Tenants Saying We Need To Help/convince Squatter To Move Out Or He Will Take Him To Court And We Will All Have An Eviction On Our Records.

Location: Wisconsin

I signed a 4-way lease on a house that my friend and a couple of his acquaintances had already been living in for a few years.

Unknown to me and my friend one of his acquaintances/our roommate is mentally ill. He was being treated for schizoaffective disorder successfully for years but stopped taking his meds, got fired, and ceased paying rent 5 months into the lease. The rest of us had to cover his rent to avoid being evicted. Roommate became increasingly unstable and threatened violence multiple times when we tried to talk to him so we all moved out once the lease was up at the end of January.

Since then previous roommate has refused to move out and landlord has sent the rest of us texts and emails saying if he has to take roommate to court to evict it is going to go on all of our records.

Mentally ill roommate has stopped communicating with any of us but before doing so threatened to destroy the property if landlord forces him out.

My question is how liable am I in all of this. The lease was joint but the lease is now over, so can my previous landlord legally go after me and other innocent roommates? Will we have to pay financially if crazy roommate smashes up the house when he eventually gets legally evicted?

This whole situation has been very stressful. I am extremely worried about getting an eviction on my record because that would make it almost impossible to find a decent affordable apartment in my city. How worried should I be about this? Is it time to spend the little money I have on a lawyer?