u/Worried_Depth8916

Please don't delete this post! I don't know where else to post. I'm desperate in need of help. (r/Legaladvicebelgium does not have many members).

It's a really long story but here's a short version:

Long story short: I came for studies, had to terminate studies because of something personal, came back to my country, and subletted the student property. Landlady wasn't happy that I subletted, she's saying why should she pay me back deposit money? The new tenant didn't pay her deposit money (although he's actively paying all rents). Now landlady (and landlord- her husband) both are avoiding me. Landlord has blocked me on WhatsApp. Lease officially expires on 31 August, 2026. Which is currently in my name. How do I get the money back? (I cannot come to Belgium again).

Longer version with important details (police was involved in a squatter situation):

July 31, 2025 - I paid deposit money of 2 months rent (1120 euros) and signed a official student rental agreement (also signed by landlady) for 1 year lease. The money was paid directly to her account.

September 1, 2025 - I moved in the property. Property is in Ixelles, Brussels.

December 27, 2025 - I left because I was depressed. I wasn't sure if that was temporary. Subletting is not allowed in the student property, although landlady allows if you request her (I saw when I was there). I officially agreed with a guy to sublet to him (so I could keep visa if I wanted to come back). I had left the key in the room door, like I always did when living there- property is password protected from the outside so it's safe.

January 2, 2026- When the new person (who is a lawyer) came to pick up the key, there was a squatter living there. Apparently, another person who was living in the building had let the person in sharing his personal password. The person wasn't going out, and police had to be involved to kick him out. The lawyer called police to get rid of squatter. I was in my country at that time. Landlady was called and she was angry (rightfully), saying that subletting isn't allowed, how did anyone even know to move in and that you weren't there?

Anyway, police had used the spare key, and got him out. The lawyer made me text her that he, xyz name, is my friend, his social security no. is abc, and that as my friend he will be taking care of my room so nothing like this happens again, and that he will keep the key while I'm not there. Landlady told me thanks for letting me know providing his details. The lawyer took key, he left, and next week he moved in.

He had paid January's rent directly to landlady, and provided me bank document too. We were regularly in touch. He told me he's getting the place for his cousin who is not a student but will be student in a couple of months (place can be rented to only students). He said after the lease is over, his cousin will officially get it in his name. And he said he is a little tight on money so I'll have to wait few months to get the deposit money back. I said okay.

We regularly called for a month even to randomly chitchat. But afterwards, he started ghosting me. I couldn't contact him again, neither do I have his cousin's contact who lives there. The people in the building say the cousin person is incredibly rude and doesn't talk to anyone.

February: Landlady visited the place in February, and she saw the person (his cousin) living there. And he told her that I've officially left the country, and that he lives there now.

May 21, 2026: I sent landlady a message, "As you know, I've left the place. Can we please terminate the contract", and asking her about the deposit money. She confirmed, "You wish to terminate the contract?" I said yes. She asked me to send her email I did so. But she kept on forgetting and asking me again and again "Oh you wish to terminate contract? Ok".

August, 2026: I asked her for the deposit money. She said again, "You wish to end the contract now?" I said yes. She said "what deposit money? the new tenant didn't give us any. You cheated". (Although new tenant actively pays rent). Afterwards her wifi got off, I sent her screenshots of messages that we had been talking about ending contract from so long that she had forgotten about it.

I called her husband (landlord), and he immediately blocked me on WhatsApp without even answering. 2 days later landlady seenzoned my WhatsApp messages.

Now I don't know what to do.

Someone also told me, that as police was involved, there were probably damages/charges, or key lock changed. But nothing like this happened that was communicated to me or the person living there. My landlady isn't the kind of person to let something like charges slide.

I know I did really shitty thing on the whole squatter situation that led me in this spot. But that still doesn't give the landlords rights to keep the money.

1. Should I send a simple letter to her/her husband's home? Simply asking the tenant should pay the deposit money for the new year (1st sept), and I should get mine back.
2. Should I send her a legal letter? (Can I do that without having to pay a bunch?) Can a student lawyer help me out?
3. Should I ask someone to talk to the person living there?
4. How is Huurdersbond? Can they help me?

The agreement says it will finish itself on August 31, unless I continue to live there (I'm not there), and also it says in case of a legal case, if I lose, I will have to pay 3 rents (which I cant).

Someone advised me I shouldn't do anything and wait until October 31, as that's how long the landlords have time to pay me back.

I think a legal action will easily scare the landlords and they may pay. Just a legal letter. Also, the building is absolutely garbage, (probably fire hazard too), and has worst energy rating (E).

Please give me sincere advice! I can pay a little bit to deal with the situation, but I can't pay something like 200-400 euros to hire a lawyer. But maybe if I know for certain I'd get the money then I'd think about it.

I was a full stack software engineer for 3-4 years hired to work on different open source projects. My stack was: Python, Django, TypeScript, JavaScript. But the truth is, I was never good at what I did. I was just good enough to get by, through using chatgpt. My manager knew I wasn't good, which is why he always had complains. Although our foreign client/my teammates thought I was okay. But deep inside I knew I'm faking. In meetings, I never understood when people talked about the architectures of the projects, mostly chose to be silent because I had nothing to contribute. I also didn't know the core concepts of the frameworks or the languages I worked in.

Anyways, due to some personal emergencies, I had to resign from job. It's been a year now. I want to get back into IT, but it seems a very daunting process and I don't know what to do/how to get a job.

Recently I got diagnosed with severe ADHD. I had it my whole life, but didn't know. The way I see the interview process, as a full stack engineer:

- System Design Interview - I don't know exactly what to study and where to study it from? I don't have versatile experience with databases.

- Coding interview (this requires a lot of leetcode practice?). I'm better at coding with TypeScript, not Python. As per my understanding, some coding interviews involve API responses, and I find such functional programming easier. I like doing so using TypeScript. But not the other kind, the leetcode kind. I would probably want to do that in C++, not in python. To me, this part alone seems like something that requires a lot of time. With practice, I could understand beginner level problems.

- Framework/Library interview: Django or TypeScript/JavaScript etc. Django's documentation seems really complex and super-long. I have gone through the basics of it several times. I understand it when I'm reading it, but I'm simply not able to retain the complex structure. Having worked in Django for 2.5 years, even at the time I resigned job I wouldn't know how to explain models or views. Like if someone asked me that, my mind would have to maybe think for 5 minutes, and then come up with a really basic answer.

When I'm working, I'm good enough to connect the dots, add new functionalities, etc do everything, but except design the architecture from scratch. I simply don't have experience for that. Especially with AI, I could probably do good work as long as it's not designing the architecture from scratch.

It seems there is a lot to do, and I don't know how to get started to be good at it for interviews. I tend to forget things if I'm not like actively working on them all the time, which is why I don't remember even basic core concepts that I did work on during my job.

I was doing a devOps interview, and interviewer was asking me about github actions. Even though I have created several github actions for different purposes in the opensource projects, interviewer was asking me specifics like the exact code of the yaml jobs, and I just froze. I said I could show you the public PRs that I worked on? He got extremely disappointed and angry.

The forgetful memory is an ADHD thing that I didn't know about before, but I always had it growing up.

I was looking into n8n for freelancing, but then I was like am I wasting time as I desperately need a job right now?

Anyone has some good resources and an easy route for me for full stack intervews? I just need to pass the interviews. OR any other suggestion. THanks

Rented a student studio in Ixelles, lease ends Aug 31. Had to leave the country and stop my studies partway through for personal reasons. I knew that if I just left without arranging anything, I likely wouldn't see the deposit again, so I told the landlady in advance that a friend would stay and take care of the room while I was away, and she agreed. He paid rent directly to her the whole time. She even spoke with him in person when she visited the building, and he told her he was the one living there now officially.

Now that the lease is ending, it appears she's dodging on the two-month deposit (€1120) - one message she says "you sublet, that's cheating/not allowed" next message she says "he didn't pay us" - I think she means a deposit for him specifically, since he's clearly been paying rent this whole time. When I explained her, she just seenzoned me. I've got the signed deposit receipt and a full paper trail showing she knew about the arrangement and didn't object at the time. And also a receipt for the first payment he made to her directly.

I also tried contacting her husband, who's a co-owner and seemed more reasonable, but he blocked me immediately when I called him- without talking to me at all.

I'm not in Belgium anymore, so hiring a lawyer isn't really worth it for this amount and too complicated for me. What can I do here?

Thanks in advance.

Rented a student studio in Ixelles, lease ends Aug 31. Had to leave the country and stop my studies partway through for personal reasons. I knew that if I just left without arranging anything, I likely wouldn't see the deposit again, so I told the landlady in advance that a friend would stay and take care of the room while I was away, and she agreed. He paid rent directly to her the whole time. She even spoke with him in person when she visited the building, and he told her he was the one living there now officially.

Now that the lease is ending, it appears she's dodging on the two-month deposit (€1120) - one message she says "you sublet, that's cheating/not allowed" next message she says "he didn't pay us" - I think she means a deposit for him specifically, since he's clearly been paying rent this whole time. When I explained her, she just seenzoned me. I've got the signed deposit receipt and a full paper trail showing she knew about the arrangement and didn't object at the time. And also a receipt for the first payment he made to her directly.

I also tried contacting her husband, who's a co-owner and seemed more reasonable, but he blocked me immediately when I called him- without talking to me at all.

I'm not in Belgium anymore, so hiring a lawyer isn't really worth it for this amount and too complicated for me. What can I do here?

Thanks in advance.

Making this post on behalf of a friend. She bought a grey persian kitten 46 days old. The shop also gave her royal canine cat food. They gave her unofficially packed packet of the cat food saying they get short so we make custom packets from bigger packs.

And they gave her “royal canine sensitivity control chicken with rice” told her to use this with the food. And consume the small pack in 4 servings. She noticed on the pack the minimum size of cat given is 2kg? The kitten weighs 0.45kg. Two overall servings in a day. They said to give chicken only after vacination is done - which she should wait for 1-2 weeks. They said to give it 2 meals per day. I asked claude and it said that's too less meals for a kitten that age?

When she bought there was a lot of commute and i think the kitten was stressed, kept meowing. When she fed him for the 2nd time hes vomiting, and pooping in random places. Sometimes uses the litter tray too.

She called shop and told them about the minimum weight shared on the pack they said its okay we have been continuously using it on all cats.

They said dont feed him until morning and see if he vomits again then we will tell you something to give him.

Please share if the current food choice is okay and how to proceed.

For those who don't know, PMDD is a very strong form of PMS (premenstrual syndrome). A person with PMDD experiences very intense and overwhelming emotions of anxiety, sadness, depression, including suicidal thoughts.

My partner is an amazing person and is the most kindhearted. Sometimes she pushes people away when she gets overwhelmed because she thinks she will hurt them otherwise. And that's okay. I see through your pain and I understand you.

Could we please take a moment to appreciate her and others with PCOS (now PMOS) and PMDD. We see you and your pain. And you're not alone. We're here with you. We are sorry that you had to go through this, and none of this is your fault.

(She's on reddit I'll send her the post link). Could we please appreciate her. She's so amazing and so strong. Thanks!

Blaming parents for the state we are in - our current state, shortcomings, or failures.

I was seeing this post on reddit (How many of us blame our parents for the state we are in?)

And people had really strong wording there.

Some of the comments from that thread:

>"In my opinion after you are an adult it's your responsibility to fix what the f*ck went wrong with you in your childhood by whoever. Blaming parents only makes sense in teenage years when you are immature and act on emotions"

>"but if you wanna be a lil bish all day and complain to people why you're a loser, you could justify to yourself at night that you're a loser because of your parents"

>"In my opinion before 30 years of age you can blame your parents for controlling your life and what not. Afterwards it's your own responsibility...."

So while it is always our responsibility to fix our shortcomings, but we really need to self-reflect what went wrong where and learn from the experience. ALSO this becomes more important if you're a guy, because you'll be bringing your partner in the same household - if your parents are toxic, it's your job to recognize that so you can protect your partner and your kids.

As we grow up, sometimes we tend to start blaming ourselves for everything. Maybe it comes from a negative self-talk. But life experiences are more complicated than they appear on the surface level.

If you grew up in a dysfunctional household where there were always fights, maybe you grew up with anxiety that interfered with your ability to move ahead in life. Even if you're in your 30s - age has actually very little to do with it. So yes, you should recognize what went wrong (even if it's your parents) and fix it and keep healing.

Some of the comments said "we should acknowledge it was their first time being parents" I mean some things are simply not excusable? It's understandable if the problem is like financial assets (but then you shouldn't have many kids). It does not take a genius to realize shouting around, domestic violence, being unfair to your daughters, comparing your kids, micro-controlling grownass adults is wrong. What does "first time" has to do with it? I swear foreigner little school-going kids have higher IQ than these parents? They have never heard the term "anger management". It's not the kid's job to become an adult at an early age because of domestic issues and be the parents to their parents with a high level of empathy because they lacked it?

I don't think anyone just sits around blaming others. Everyone is struggling and working hard for themselves. Maybe being a little too hard on themselves perhaps. But we need to self-reflect as we embark on our journey of healing. This does not only benefit you, but is also important for your relationship with your partner, and your kids.

Looking for affordable indoor badminton courts. Is there also a student discount? My friend is a student with whom Ill be playing.

We are based in Wapda town and Gulberg. Location can be anywhere near these areas, just not too far like DHA or askari sides.