You were living with someone and the two of you split up. You left and now the other person won’t let you have your stuff. What can you do?
For married people the divorce case gives them the ability to ask a judge to require their spouse to allow access to the place where they were living together to collect their personal property. For couples who are not married, however, this isn’t an option.
What you have to do instead is file something called a Warrant In Detinue in the general District Court. Unless the items are extremely valuable, you will not want to hire a lawyer to do this for you because their fees will usually be more than the value of the items you are trying to get back. So this is a job you will want to do yourself.
Here is a link to the Legal Aid Society’s webpage about this. The discussion of Warrants in Detinue is about a third of the way down the page.
