Occupancy Agreement for person living in my house
Location: Mesa, AZ
A friend of mine and her children are currently living with my partner and I in a house that we own. Neither my partner or I have any intention of charging her or her family rent or asking for reimbursement for housing in the future. All of us are of the understanding that this housing arrangement will stand until we sell the house and move out of state (probably for the next 2-3 years) or she decides to move out on her own.
Now, without going into to much personal detail, my friend has a lot of trauma in regards to housing. While we would never kick her out of the house (we see this place as much her home as ours) I do understand the fear given she is trying to give her children a stable place to live.
I've been trying to find some sort of legal agreement that we can all sign that would give her some piece of mind that the rug wont just be pulled out from under her. My attempts to Google for the right document have left me more confused than anything:
- Having her sign a lease doesn't seem right because I am not looking to charge her anything for rent and I don't necessarily want a lease term. We just want her to be able to live in the house until either she wants to leave or we sell it. Also, none of us like the idea of her being a "tenant".
- I found something called an Occupancy Agreement but as far as I can tell is used real estate deals and seems to be more of a short term thing.
- Similarly, I came across a Right to Occupy Agreement which sounded promising but all the examples I found had to do with estate planning.
I'm hoping that someone can point me in the right direction. Am I misunderstanding some of these agreements or is this a situation where we just need to draft a document saying "We won't kick you out" and have all of us sign it?