My Tenant Won't Leave: Evictions in TN, GA & Alabama

If your tenant has stopped paying or won't move out, Tennessee, Georgia, and Alabama each give you a fast court track to possession — and each forbids a residential landlord from taking the property back without one. The names, notice periods, and clocks differ by state. This is general information about how those procedures work, not legal advice.

Key points

  • Self-help against a residential tenant is unlawful in Tennessee, Georgia, and Alabama: changing locks, cutting utilities, or removing belongings makes the landlord the defendant. Possession comes from a court order.
  • Three clocks: Tennessee, a fourteen-day notice then a detainer warrant; Georgia, a demand plus a three-business-day notice on most residential leases, then a dispossessory; Alabama, seven business days.
  • Every state pauses between judgment and the writ — ten days in Tennessee, seven in Georgia and Alabama, though Georgia's writ issues at once if the tenant never answers — and staying on appeal costs money.
  • Defective notices, miscounted days, accepting rent after notice, and the service choice are what slow an eviction; in Georgia, a default after posting-and-mail service yields possession only, not a money judgment.
  • Timelines are ranges, not promises: uncontested cases commonly run several weeks from notice to writ, contested cases far longer, and county calendars and sheriff scheduling dominate the statutory clock.

Overview

An eviction is a summary proceeding built to answer one question quickly: who is entitled to possession right now. Damage claims and deposit disputes travel alongside it or wait for a separate case, and that narrowness is why it moves fast.

Each state names it differently. In Tennessee you file a detainer warrant in General Sessions Court; in Georgia, a dispossessory in magistrate court; in Alabama, an eviction action in district court — or circuit court when the money claim is large enough — where older statutes still call the commercial version an unlawful detainer. All three run one shape — notice, filing, judgment, writ, officer — on three different clocks. Procedure follows below; what a lease obligates each side to do sits on the real estate litigation page.

The Rule Against Self-Help

Most landlords ask in week one: can I change the locks?

No — in none of the three states. Not the locks, the power or water or heat, the door off its hinges, the furniture on the lawn, or refusing rent as pressure. For a residential tenancy, possession comes from a court order carried out by an officer, and no lease clause buys you out of it. (Commercial leases are different in one state — see the commercial section.) Even the family member or partner who won’t go is usually an occupant you remove through court.

A lockout inverts your case, making you the defendant facing a statutory damages formula, tenant still in place. In Tennessee’s larger counties, the residential act lets a tenant locked out or cut off recover actual damages, punitive damages where warranted, and fees; elsewhere the forcible-entry statutes and common law supply the claim, without the residential act’s punitive-damages and fee provisions. Alabama caps its formula at no more than three months’ rent or actual damages, whichever is greater, plus fees. Georgia makes shutting off cooling, heat, light, or water before final decision a fineable offense, its courts long holding the dispossessory the only lawful way to remove a tenant.

If you have already done it. Restore access, document what you restored and when, and get advice about the counterclaim coming. The lawful route is fast, and most delay avoidable.

The Three Tracks at a Glance

StepTennesseeGeorgiaAlabama
What it’s calledDetainer warrantDispossessoryEviction action (unlawful detainer, commercial)
CourtGeneral SessionsMagistrateDistrict (circuit for larger money claims)
Notice before filing (nonpayment)Fourteen days to cure (outside the larger counties, rentals with a period under fourteen days are excepted); none in the larger counties if the lease validly waives itDemand for possession, plus a notice to pay or vacate within three business days on most residential leasesSeven business days to cure
How notice days countCalendar days (from receipt under the residential act; from the date given elsewhere)Business days for the three-day pay-or-vacate notice; the demand itself has no waiting periodBusiness days
Tenant’s window to respondTrial set no sooner than six days after serviceAnswer within seven days of actual serviceAnswer within seven calendar days of service
Writ after judgmentNo writ for ten daysEffective seven days after judgment; immediate if no answerSeven-day automatic stay
Appeal windowTen daysSeven daysSeven days
What keeps the tenant in on appealSecurity equal to a year’s rentRent paid into the court registryAccrued and ongoing rent paid to the circuit clerk

Two notes the table can’t carry. Tennessee runs two rulebooks: the residential act applies only in larger counties, the Nashville area included, and a separate statute governs elsewhere. Nonpayment notice matches at fourteen days, but almost everything around it differs, and the county list rests on a fixed census count, not current population. Confirm the regime before drafting. And in Alabama an appeal does not stop the writ unless the tenant keeps paying the accrued rent to the circuit clerk — the rule that most changes the settle-or-hold math.

Tennessee: Notice and the Detainer Warrant

In the covered counties the residential act governs and preempts local rules; elsewhere a different statute applies, with thirty days for most other defaults and a three-day notice for a narrow set of causes — violence, drug-related criminal activity, danger to others — that reaches only public-housing tenants and tenants who are not disabled; for anyone else, violence or danger runs fourteen days and other breaches thirty. Nonpayment is fourteen days either way, in calendar days, and is a cure window: pay inside it and the lease continues. (Outside the larger counties, the statute does not reach rentals with a period shorter than fourteen days.)

One detail costs landlords cases. A written lease in the covered counties can waive the nonpayment notice entirely, letting you file the day the five-day rent grace period ends — the waiver does not shorten that grace period — but only if it appears in twelve-point bold or larger, which many form leases miss.

The steps, once notice has run:

  1. File a detainer warrant in General Sessions Court for the county where the property sits.
  2. The officer serves the tenant and sets a court date no sooner than six days out.
  3. The judge hears it without a jury; title is not on the table, only possession.
  4. Win possession and the judge must calculate the arrearage, interest, and damages and enter a money judgment — provided the tenant was served in a way that supports a personal judgment, not merely by posting.
  5. No writ of possession issues for ten days after judgment.
  6. The sheriff then schedules and executes the removal.

That ten-day pause is also the appeal window. A tenant staying through appeal must post security equal to a year’s rent — a bond, cash deposit, letter of credit, or two personal sureties; one who appeals without posting it loses possession, and you take the property posting no bond. A judge may postpone the hearing for good cause, but not more than seven days absent the parties’ agreement, a ceiling cut from fifteen in 2024. Property left behind goes on the premises, clear of the entrance and away from the roadway, undisturbed for forty-eight hours; after that it can be discarded.

Georgia: Demand and the Dispossessory Proceeding

Georgia front-loads a step landlords skip: before filing you must demand possession and be refused. The demand is a condition precedent — miss it and the case is subject to dismissal however far behind the tenant is.

Since mid-2024, nonpayment cases carry a second requirement from the Safe at Home Act: a notice giving three business days to pay the past-due rent, late fees, utilities, and other charges, or vacate. That notice must be posted in a sealed envelope conspicuously on the door, plus delivered by any method the lease specifies — skipping the envelope is a live defense. The statute’s posting rule is written so that it can read as reaching the demand as well, so the prudent course is to post the demand the same way. It reaches residential leases made or renewed on or after July 1, 2024.

The steps:

  1. Demand possession; for nonpayment, also serve the three-business-day pay-or-vacate notice with door posting.
  2. File a dispossessory affidavit in the magistrate court where the property sits.
  3. Serve personally, on an adult resident of the premises, or — if reasonable efforts fail — by posting and same-day mailing.
  4. The tenant has seven days from actual service to answer, orally or in writing.
  5. No answer means a writ issues immediately, with judgment for the rent claimed as well — unless service was by posting and mail and the tenant never answered or appeared, in which case the judgment is for possession only.
  6. On judgment against the tenant, the writ takes effect seven days later.

The service choice decides what you can collect: posting and mailing gets possession, but no money judgment unless the tenant answers or appears — so real back rent justifies another service attempt. A residential tenant can also pay and stay: tendering all rent owed plus the cost of the dispossessory within seven days of service is a complete defense, and you must accept it only once per twelve months; refuse a valid tender and the court can order payment within three days, without consuming the tenant’s once-a-year right.

Two deadlines land on you: claim the rent, which Georgia awards only if you ask, and apply for execution within thirty days of the writ’s issuance — later only with an affidavit showing good cause for the delay — or seek a new writ. If the sheriff cannot execute within fourteen days of your request, Georgia allows an authorized off-duty certified officer at your cost, after five calendar days’ written notice to the sheriff.

Alabama: Notice and the Eviction Action

Alabama’s notice period for a residential lease violation is seven business days, not fourteen — it dropped from fourteen days to seven in 2014 and has run in business days since 2018. Nonpayment runs the same, and where a tenant breached both ways the nonpayment period governs. The notice must specify what the tenant did or owes, with the rent amount and any late fees for nonpayment. A tenant can cure inside the window, but no more than twice per twelve months without written consent.

Some conduct carries a notice with no cure at all — the statute’s list is not exhaustive, but it names:

The steps:

  1. Serve the seven-business-day notice specifying the violation or the amount owed.
  2. File the eviction action for the county where the property sits — in district court, or in circuit court if the rent and damages claimed exceed the district court’s limit.
  3. Serve personally, on an adult resident, or by door posting with same-day (or next-business-day) first-class mail — posting is complete on the mailing date.
  4. The tenant has seven calendar days from service to answer.
  5. Eviction actions take scheduling precedence over other civil cases.
  6. An automatic seven-day stay runs after judgment before the writ issues on application.

Count carefully. Alabama runs four sevens on different clocks. The notices run in business days; the answer runs in calendar days, with no weekend or holiday exclusion, since the short-period rule that skips weekends elsewhere in Alabama practice does not apply here. The appeal window runs from entry of judgment, though a timely post-judgment motion suspends it. The act defines a day as a calendar day, with a deadline that lands on a weekend or holiday rolling to the next day the court is open, but it never defines “business days” — so when the count is close, give the longer period; one day short costs the filing.

An appeal does not by itself keep the tenant in the property. To stop the writ, the tenant must pay the circuit court clerk all rent properly payable since filing and keep paying; miss one and the writ issues on your motion. District court appeals are preferred cases, set for trial within sixty days.

Holdover Tenants and Expired Leases

A lease that ended is not a tenancy that ended. If the tenant is still there and you are still accepting the arrangement, you likely have a periodic tenancy, and ending it takes its own notice — in Alabama, and in Tennessee’s larger counties, thirty days before the rental date for month-to-month, less for week-to-week. Only then is the person holding over.

Alabama, and Tennessee under its residential act, add teeth for bad faith: beyond possession and back rent, a willful holdover can owe additional damages and fees, with Alabama’s exposure capped at three months’ rent or actual damages, whichever is greater. For a commercial lessee who refuses to surrender after written demand, it is double the annual rent plus special damages.

A holdover tenant signed a lease, written or spoken, and stayed past it; a squatter was never a tenant. Tennessee added a fast sheriff-removal track for genuine squatters, residential in 2024 and commercial in 2025: the sheriff verifies ownership, serves an immediate notice to vacate, and restores possession. It applies only where every statutory condition holds — among them that the occupant is not a current or former tenant under any written or oral rental agreement, is not an immediate family member, entered unlawfully onto property that was not open to the public, has been told by the owner to leave, and no litigation is pending. Point it at a holdover and the person removed can be restored to possession and recover triple the fair market rent, plus costs and fees. When in doubt, treat the occupant as a tenant and file.

Contested Cases

Most tenants don’t contest. When one does, the branches diverge.

The tenant answers. The most common winning defense is a defective notice; habitability and retaliation come up too, and in a covered Tennessee county the residential act supplies the framework. A real defense must be tried.

The tenant appeals. Each state conditions continued possession on money, and a tenant who cannot fund it does not stay.

The tenant pays part of the rent. Accepting money after a notice can waive it and force you to start over. In Tennessee, taking rent with knowledge of the default and without a reservation of rights can condone it; in Georgia, accepting rent that accrues after the case is filed can waive the nonpayment ground; Alabama’s rule is less settled. Get your state’s answer first, and take any payment with a written reservation of rights.

The tenant files for bankruptcy. The filing triggers an automatic stay halting the eviction. Exceptions exist, including where a possession judgment preceded the petition, but each carries its own procedure.

Belongings left behind. The rule does not cross the state line. Georgia treats property as abandoned once the writ is executed, the landlord owing no duty as bailee; Tennessee requires it clear of the entrance, away from the roadway, untouched forty-eight hours; Alabama sets no post-writ curbside procedure, but a landlord has no duty to store or protect property left in the unit more than fourteen days after termination and may then dispose of it without obligation.

Possession and money are separate outcomes, and week-one choices quietly forfeit the second. Recover possession in Tennessee and the judge must determine the arrearage and enter judgment for it, if service supports a personal judgment; Alabama’s action reaches rent and damages alongside possession; Georgia’s court awards rent only if you claim it. The rest travels separately — damage beyond the deposit, the balance of an unexpired term, and common-area charges under a commercial lease are breach-of-contract claims on a slower track. Weigh collectability before filing.

Common Landlord Mistakes

Where landlords lose:

Timelines and What to Expect

Two clocks run in every eviction. The statutory clock is in the table above. The practical clock dominates: metro calendars run longer than rural ones, every failed service attempt adds days, and the sheriff’s schedule for executing the writ is not set by statute in Tennessee or Alabama. That is how a “fourteen-day notice” becomes two months.

No statute fixes an end-to-end duration, so treat any week count you read online as a guess. An uncontested case runs weeks, not days, from the day proper notice goes out; a contested case runs far longer; an appeal adds months.

Counsel on an eviction has one job — keep the case on the short track and preserve the money judgment at the end.

Commercial Tenants

Commercial evictions run parallel tracks with most tenant protections stripped out. Tennessee’s residential act does not reach a commercial tenancy, and Tennessee is the one state where a commercial lease that expressly reserves the landlord’s right of re-entry has been enforced without a court — but only where the re-entry was genuinely peaceable, and a misjudgment there converts the landlord into the defendant, so treat it as a lawyer’s call rather than a self-help licence. Georgia’s pay-and-stay defense turns on tendering everything owed; a commercial tenant who tenders less than the full amount has no defense, though the court credits the partial payment in awarding damages. Alabama’s commercial cases run under the older unlawful-detainer article, with its double-annual-rent exposure for a lessee who refuses to surrender after written demand, and a notice period set by the lease and general default rules. What the lease says about default, cure, reentry, assignment, and remedies usually matters more than procedure, and that fight travels its own track — see commercial lease disputes.

One federal overlay reaches residential tenancies only: if the dwelling carries a federally backed mortgage or sits in a federal housing program, a federal thirty-day notice requirement for nonpayment may apply on top of state law. The provision has no expiration date, and courts have generally continued to enforce it since the moratorium lapsed — though not uniformly, and its scope is contested. Coverage turns on the loan or program; check before sending a state-law notice.

For the property disputes this article sits inside — lease breaches, title problems, disputes among co-owners — see real estate litigation. A guide to quiet-title actions is live; a guide to court-ordered sales of co-owned property is live as well.

Michael Franklin Braun handles real estate litigation, including landlord-tenant and eviction matters, in Tennessee, Georgia, and Alabama. Because he is admitted in all three, a landlord with property across state lines does not need three separate lawyers to answer one question. If you have a tenant who won’t pay or won’t leave, or a notice you are not sure is good, get in touch.

This article is general information about Tennessee, Georgia, and Alabama eviction procedure, not legal advice, and it does not create an attorney-client relationship. Statutes and local court practice change; confirm the current rule for your county before acting.

Common questions

Can a landlord change the locks or turn off the utilities to force a tenant out?
No. In Tennessee, Georgia, and Alabama alike, a residential landlord cannot take back a rental by changing the locks, cutting off power, water, or heat, removing doors, or putting a tenant's belongings out. Possession has to come from a court order carried out by an officer. Doing it yourself does more than fail — it hands the tenant a claim: damages and, in Tennessee's larger counties, punitive damages and attorney's fees; in Alabama, up to three months' rent or actual damages, whichever is greater, plus fees; in Georgia, a fine for shutting off utilities before the case is decided. The landlord who was owed rent becomes the defendant, and the tenant is still in the unit.
How much notice does a landlord have to give before filing an eviction?
It depends on the state and the reason. In Tennessee, nonpayment generally takes a fourteen-day notice to pay or move — and in the larger counties a lease can waive that notice entirely if the waiver is printed in twelve-point bold, letting the landlord file once the five-day rent grace period has run. Some other lease defaults outside the larger counties take thirty days. In Georgia, the landlord must demand possession, and for residential leases entered or renewed since July 1, 2024, a nonpayment case also requires a notice to pay or vacate within three business days, posted in a sealed envelope on the door. In Alabama, both nonpayment and most lease violations take seven business days. Two counting traps: Georgia's pay-or-vacate notice and Alabama's notices run on business days; Tennessee's run on calendar days, from receipt under the residential act.
What happens if the tenant ignores the court papers?
Nothing good for the tenant, but the details differ. In Georgia, if the tenant does not answer within seven days of being served, the court issues a writ of possession immediately — no hearing, no further evidence. Whether a money judgment comes with it depends on service: if the papers were posted on the door and mailed rather than handed to someone, the court can award possession but not a money judgment unless the tenant answers or appears. In Tennessee and Alabama, a missed hearing or answer produces a default judgment for possession, with the writ following after that state's built-in waiting period. A tenant who misses the deadline has limited options, mostly aimed at how the papers were served.
Can a tenant stop an eviction by paying the rent owed?
Often, yes, and each state builds in a window. Tennessee's fourteen-day nonpayment notice is a cure period — pay within it and the lease continues. Alabama's seven-business-day notice works the same way, with a cap of two cures in any twelve-month period absent the landlord's written consent. Georgia goes further: a residential tenant who tenders all rent owed plus the cost of the dispossessory within seven days of being served has a complete defense to the case — but a landlord is required to accept that tender only once in any twelve months. If the landlord wrongly refuses a valid tender, the court can order the tenant to pay within three days instead, and that payment does not use up the tenant's once-a-year right. For commercial tenants, only a full tender counts; a partial payment is no defense, though it is credited against damages.
How long after the judgment does the sheriff actually remove the tenant?
Not the same day, and usually not the same week. Tennessee bars the writ of possession for ten days after judgment — the same window in which the tenant can appeal. Georgia's writ takes effect seven days after judgment, with one exception: if the tenant never answered, the writ issues immediately. Alabama puts an automatic seven-day stay on the writ. After that, the actual removal depends on the sheriff's schedule, which is not set by statute in Tennessee or Alabama; Georgia lets a landlord hire an authorized off-duty officer at its own cost if the sheriff cannot execute within fourteen days of the request, after five calendar days' written notice to the sheriff. Georgia landlords have their own deadline too — apply for execution within thirty days of the writ — later only with an affidavit showing good cause — or get a new one.
Can the tenant appeal and stay in the property rent-free?
Appeal windows are short — ten days in Tennessee, seven in Georgia and Alabama — and in all three states staying put during the appeal costs money. A Tennessee tenant must post security equal to a year's rent, as a bond, a cash deposit, a letter of credit, or two personal sureties; a tenant who appeals without doing that does not keep possession, and the landlord takes it without having to post a bond of its own. A Georgia tenant must pay the rent found due, and all rent coming due, into the court registry. An Alabama tenant's appeal does not stop the writ at all unless the tenant pays the accrued rent to the circuit clerk and keeps paying; miss a payment and the writ issues on motion. Rent-free is rare.
What is the difference between a squatter and a holdover tenant?
It matters more than it sounds. Someone who signed a lease — written or spoken — and then stayed past the end of it is a holdover tenant, and getting them out takes the full court process, the same as any other eviction. A squatter, in the legal sense, is someone who was never a tenant at all. Tennessee has a fast sheriff-removal track for genuine squatters, added for residential property in 2024 and for commercial property in 2025, but it applies only where every statutory condition holds — among them that the occupant is not a current or former tenant, is not an immediate family member, entered unlawfully onto property that was not open to the public, has been told by the owner to leave, and there is no pending litigation over the property. Using it against a holdover backfires hard: a person wrongly removed can be restored to possession and recover triple the fair market rent plus costs and fees. When in doubt, treat the occupant as a tenant and file.

Primary sources

Wherever your matter stands, the next step is a conversation. Call (615) 378-8942 or email mfb@braun-law.com.