What does 14 MRSA §6014 actually prohibit?
Section 6014 says that any eviction done without using Maine’s Forcible Entry and Detainer process is illegal and against public policy. The statute specifically bans three moves: willfully interrupting utilities, denying the tenant access to the unit, and denying the tenant access to their property. Everything outside a court-ordered FED falls here.
The statute is short. It lists three categories of prohibited conduct, sets a floor for tenant damages, and reserves all other remedies under other law. If you want to understand Maine’s entire anti-self-help framework, you can read
§6014 in full in about two minutes. Here is what each prohibition actually covers.
Utility interruption (subsection 1-A)
No landlord may willfully cause the interruption or termination of any utility service being supplied to the tenant. The statute names water, heat, light, electricity, gas, telephone, sewerage, elevator, and refrigeration. Two things worth flagging. First, this applies whether or not the utility is in the landlord’s name. Second, the one carve-out is temporary interruption during actual repairs or emergencies.
In my experience, this is the single most common §6014 exposure for small Bangor landlords. The tenant stops paying. The electric is in the owner’s name and the bill is piling up. The owner calls Versant and asks them to shut it off. That phone call is a §6014 violation, even if the landlord never set foot on the property.
Denying access to the premises (subsection 1-B)
No landlord may willfully seize, hold, or otherwise deny a tenant access to their rented premises, except through proper judicial process. That means no lock changes. No welding the door. No “I’ll meet you at the property and you can pack what you can carry.” No boarding up the windows of a unit you believe the tenant has abandoned.
The word “willfully” matters less than owners think. You do not need to prove intent to cause harm. You need to show you acted on purpose, not by accident. Swapping a deadbolt is a purposeful act.
Denying access to the tenant’s property (subsection 1-C)
No landlord may willfully seize, hold, or deny a tenant access to the tenant’s belongings, except through proper judicial process. This is the subsection that gets landlords in trouble when a tenant is “probably” gone. The unit smells. The rent hasn’t been paid in six weeks. A neighbor says they saw a moving truck. You go in, haul the mattress and the plastic bins to the dump, and call it a day.
If the tenant walks back in two weeks later and sues, the fact that the property looked abandoned is not a defense under §6014. The tenant’s remedy is discussed below. The landlord’s remedy, the legal way to handle abandoned property, is
14 MRSA §6013, and it has its own notice requirements that I’ll cover in a minute.
What penalties can a Maine landlord face under §6014?
The statute gives the court two findings to make, and the court can make one or both. Tenants recover actual damages or
$250, whichever is greater. Tenants also recover costs and reasonable attorneys’ fees. And §6014(4) preserves every other remedy the tenant has under other law, so the statutory minimum is a floor, not a ceiling.
The $250 floor looks small. The attorneys’ fees line is the one that changes the economics of a case. A Pine Tree Legal attorney who takes a §6014 case against a Bangor landlord will typically ask the court to award fees that reflect the actual time spent. A contested hearing with a day of prep and a second day in court can run the fee award well into four figures. Add the tenant’s actual damages (hotel nights, replacement property, lost wages, sometimes emotional distress under other remedies), and the total exposure on a “we just changed the locks for two days” situation can dwarf any rent the tenant owed.
The Maine Attorney General’s office has made the same point in its guidance to landlords.
Only a court may order a tenant forcibly evicted, and only a law enforcement officer can enforce that order. Attempts to force a tenant out “in any way other than filing an FED action” are illegal.
What “good faith” does not mean
Subsection 3 lets a court award fees to the landlord defendant if the tenant’s §6014 action was filed in bad faith or for harassment. In practice, I’ve never seen that clause help a landlord who actually committed one of the three prohibited acts. It reaches genuinely frivolous claims. The tenant who sues over a five-hour water shutoff while a plumber was replacing a shut-off valve, for example. It does not reach a landlord who acted on bad advice, or who did not know Maine’s rules, or who thought the tenant had abandoned the unit.
What counts as the proper judicial process?
The proper process is a Forcible Entry and Detainer action under Maine Revised Statutes Title 14, Chapter 709. You serve the correct written notice, file the FED complaint in District Court, the sheriff serves the tenant, and a hearing happens at least 14 days later. Winning gets you a writ of possession, which the sheriff executes.
For a Bangor property, that means the Penobscot Judicial Center at 78 Exchange Street. Our attorneys have filed dozens of FED actions in that courthouse, and the routine is well-established. You present the notice, the lease, and proof of service. The judge almost always offers mediation before the hearing. If the case proceeds and the landlord wins, the clerk will not issue a writ of possession for seven days. That window is the tenant’s last chance to pay and stay. Once the writ issues, the Penobscot County Sheriff’s Office schedules a lockout date and one of their deputies handles the actual physical removal.
Nothing in that process involves the landlord changing a lock, touching a tenant’s property, or calling the utility company. If you’re doing any of those things, you are not in the FED process — you are in §6014 territory.
The basic notice types before you get to court
Before an FED can be filed, the right notice has to run out. The major categories are below. I’m oversimplifying for clarity; the actual notice language and service requirements in
14 MRSA §6002 are specific and easy to botch.
| Notice type |
When it applies |
Minimum notice period |
Can tenant cure? |
| 7-day notice to pay or quit |
Nonpayment of rent (after rent is at least 7 days late) |
7 days |
Yes. Full payment within the 7 days voids the notice |
| 7-day notice to quit |
Material damage, illegal activity, nuisance, lock change without giving landlord a key within 48 hours |
7 days |
Depends on the ground; no cure for illegal activity or severe damage |
| 30-day notice |
Ending a tenancy at will without cause |
30 days, ending on or after the last date rent is paid through |
N/A. No violation being cured |
Bangor has an additional wrinkle at the notice stage. The
Bangor Tenants’ Housing Rights Ordinance, passed by city council and administered by Bangor Code Enforcement, requires 60 days’ written notice for a rent increase (up from the state’s 45) and requires the landlord to deliver a Tenant/Landlord Rights and Responsibilities document at the start of a tenancy. The ordinance doesn’t change the §6014 rules, but it adds compliance layers that affect what a judge sees when you get to the FED hearing.
What “self-help” moves get Bangor landlords in trouble?
The short list is any action that puts pressure on the tenant to leave without a court order. The common ones I see are utility calls, lock changes, possessions on the curb, thermostat games in a Maine winter, and going-in-to-clean while the tenant is out. Each has a specific failure mode and a specific tenant remedy under §6014.
Calling Versant, Bangor Natural Gas, or Bangor Water District
This is the trap landlords fall into most often. The utility is in the owner’s name, the tenant has stopped paying, and the owner figures that since they’re the account holder, they can cancel the service. The §6014(1)(A) prohibition is not limited to utilities the landlord controls. It reaches any utility service “being supplied to the tenant.” Canceling the account is willful interruption. The fact that the landlord is paying the bill does not matter.
The fix on the front end is to never put residential utilities in the owner’s name for a long-term rental. If the unit is already set up that way, and the tenant stops paying, the answer is to start the FED process, not to call the utility. Pine Tree Legal is explicit on this:
a landlord who shuts off utilities owes damages of at least $250 plus attorneys’ fees and court costs.
Changing locks while the tenant is on vacation, in the hospital, or in jail
The tenant’s absence from the unit does not terminate the tenancy. Absence does not equal abandonment. An arrest on a Thursday night doesn’t give you Monday morning to change the lock. A tenant who goes to Florida for two months without telling you is still your tenant. If you genuinely believe the tenant has abandoned the unit, meaning they moved out with no intention of returning, the correct move is to document the facts, serve a notice under §6002, and use the §6013 process for any property they left behind. Do not change the lock first and figure it out later.
Turning the thermostat down in January
Every winter I get at least one call from an owner who has decided to cut the heat to “encourage” a nonpaying tenant to leave. Heat is enumerated in the statute, so this is the textbook §6014(1)(A) violation. It is also a habitability violation under
14 MRSA §6021, and in Bangor it can separately bring Code Enforcement into the picture. Three overlapping violations, one thermostat. This is the scenario I spend the most time talking owners out of.
Putting belongings at the curb before §6013 is complete
Even after a winning FED judgment, a Bangor landlord cannot simply take the tenant’s belongings to the curb.
§6013 requires the landlord to place abandoned property in safe, dry, secured storage, send written notice by first-class mail with an itemized list, and wait the statutory period. That period is at least 7 days from the mailing of the notice, or 48 hours after the writ of possession is served, whichever is longer. If the tenant responds, the storage obligation extends to 14 days from the notice. Only after that window can the landlord dispose of or sell the items.
Hauling a couch to the curb on the day of the lockout violates §6013 and creates a §6014(1)(C) claim at the same time. I have seen this exact fact pattern produce tenant judgments larger than the underlying unpaid rent.
How does §6014 interact with §6013 and the writ of possession?
The clean hand-off is this: §6001 through §6012 cover the notice and FED process. A writ of possession authorizes the sheriff to remove the tenant. §6013 governs property left behind. §6014 provides the tenant’s remedy if the landlord skips any of the above. Stay inside §6001 through §6013 and you stay out of §6014.
What about the writ window: can the tenant still “pay and stay”?
Yes. After judgment for the landlord in an FED case, the tenant has 7 days before the writ of possession issues. During that window, if the tenant pays all rent owed plus filing fees and service-of-process fees actually paid by the landlord, the tenancy is reinstated. Pine Tree Legal publishes plain-language guidance on this pay-and-stay right as part of its
tenant eviction materials. This is why the writ doesn’t fire instantly. The statute builds in the window.
For a landlord, this matters because any move to lock out or remove a tenant during the 7-day window is a §6014 violation even though you won the case. Winning the FED does not give you possession. The writ gives you possession. Skipping the gap is the mistake.
What did the Bangor Daily News and Pine Tree Legal tell us about enforcement?
Enforcement isn’t uniform, but Pine Tree Legal Assistance and Bangor Daily News reporters have documented §6014 violations in central and eastern Maine. A 2022
Bangor Daily News story by Lia Russell covered hotels that tried to evict long-term residents with three days’ notice. Pine Tree filed restraining orders to stop them.
Pine Tree Legal attorney Maddie Thomson Crossman argued that hotels treating residents like tenants had to follow the FED process. That framing is the one Maine courts have consistently enforced: if the relationship is a tenancy in substance, §6014 applies.
For an owner-landlord in Penobscot County, the takeaway is not just that §6014 is on the books. It’s that Pine Tree has the capacity and the case law to push back when the statute is violated, and a sympathetic tenant with good documentation is a losing fight.
How do we avoid §6014 problems across hundreds of units?
We manage hundreds of units across central and eastern Maine, and the operational answer is to remove the temptation of self-help from the equation before it ever comes up. In practice that means four things, and I’ll be direct about each of them.
First, we do not put residential utilities in the owner’s or management company’s name for long-term rentals. Tenant holds the account. If the tenant stops paying, that is between the tenant and the utility, and it does not create a §6014 exposure for the landlord.
Second, we never change a lock on a unit with a live lease or a tenancy at will that has not been terminated through §6002 and the FED process. The only time a lock gets changed on our watch outside a sheriff lockout is when a tenant has formally surrendered the unit in writing, or §6013 has run its course after abandonment.
Third, our property inspections follow the access rules under Maine law and our leases. If we need to enter a unit, we give notice. The rare “welfare check” situation goes through Bangor PD or the local department, not through us and not through a third-party contractor with a master key.
Fourth, and this is the one most owners don’t think about, we document everything. In an FED hearing, the landlord who can show dated photos, written rent ledgers, certified-mail receipts, and contemporaneous notes about tenant contact wins close cases. The landlord who changed a lock and “just knows” the tenant was gone loses.
If you’re a landlord calling me after you’ve already changed a lock or called the electric company, my first question is whether the tenant knows yet. My second is whether we can get the locks restored and the power turned back on before they file.
What we do across our service area doesn’t include fixing that kind of problem after the fact. It includes keeping it from happening in the first place.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can a Maine landlord change the locks if the tenant has not paid rent in months?
No. Changing the locks without a court order and a writ of possession executed by the sheriff is a direct violation of 14 MRSA §6014(1)(B), regardless of how far behind the tenant is on rent. The tenant can recover the greater of actual damages or $250, plus attorneys’ fees and costs. The fix is to serve the correct notice under §6002 and file an FED action in the District Court where the property is located.
Is it illegal to shut off the heat or electricity to force a tenant out in Maine?
Yes.
14 MRSA §6014(1)(A) specifically bans willful interruption of water, heat, light, electricity, gas, telephone, sewerage, elevator, or refrigeration service being supplied to the tenant. The prohibition applies whether or not the utility account is in the landlord’s name. The only carve-out is temporary interruption during genuine repairs or emergencies.
How much can a Maine tenant recover for an illegal eviction?
At minimum, actual damages or $250, whichever is greater, plus costs and a reasonable attorneys’ fee. §6014(4) also preserves any other remedies under Maine law, so the statutory floor is not the ceiling. Hotel bills, replacement property, lost wages, and, through other causes of action, emotional distress can also be recovered when the facts support it.
Can I remove a tenant’s belongings after I win the eviction in court?
Not immediately. A writ of possession issues 7 days after judgment, and the sheriff executes it. For any property the tenant leaves behind, 14 MRSA §6013 requires you to place the items in safe, dry, secured storage and send first-class mail notice with an itemized list. The tenant has at least 7 days from the mailing (or 48 hours after writ service, whichever is longer) to reclaim the property. Curb-dumping before that window violates §6013 and §6014(1)(C).
Does §6014 apply if the tenant never signed a written lease?
Yes. §6014 applies to every residential tenancy covered by Chapter 709, including tenancies at will. A month-to-month verbal arrangement is still a tenancy, and the landlord must still go through the §6002 notice process and the FED action before taking possession. “There’s no lease” is not a defense to a §6014 claim.
What should I do if I think my tenant has abandoned the unit?
Document first, act second. Take dated photos, note any contact attempts, check with neighbors, confirm the mailing address is still current, and, critically, follow §6013’s notice procedures before disposing of anything. If the tenant is still technically in possession (lease has not ended, no written surrender), serve a §6002 notice and start the FED clock. Assuming abandonment and changing the lock is the fastest way to turn a vacancy into a §6014 lawsuit.
If you own rentals in Bangor or central Maine and want a manager who handles the FED process end-to-end and keeps you out of §6014 territory, consider us at Bangor Home Rentals. We’re a second-generation family business managing hundreds of units across Bangor, Brewer, Orono, Old Town, Ellsworth, and more. We’d love to earn your business. You can call us any time at
(207) 262-0199 or
click here to schedule a free property management consultation.
