Sons Karate need help with contract

[shame711]

My son has been taking karate for about year. Then the owners of the studio brought in a new partner, created a new LLC, and brought it under the umbrella of this franchise system which were not happy with. As a result the instructor, that my son loves, left to start his own studio and we joined him.

The contract we had with the old studio says if the school closes and ceases to exist the contract is void. It is our feeling that the old school is gone a new one has replaced them so our contract with them is now void. Their new partner, a lawyer, feels otherwise.

Does anyone have any advice?

 

[bpesch]

You need to get legal advise on this. I'm sure there will be lots of people giving you lots of advice, but the bottom line is unless you can read the contract and know exactly what it says, any advice is pretty much worthless.

 

[LilyWDW]

You should ask an actual lawyer...

 

[starry_solo]

Yup, get an actual lawyer. Otherwise, how long you do have left on the contract?

 

[Swimalie]

We had a similar situation. We had been going to a studio since Nov 2010. We renewed in Nov 2011. Soon after the owner's son took over more and you could tell he didn't like teaching young kids. He would snap and yell a lot. My son started to hate going. The contract was through a 3rd party called Educational Funding. With that studio, we went to the owner and told him we were leaving. We had him sign a letter stating we were out of the contract as of XX date. We sent that letter, with a letter from us to Educational Funding, certified mail. About 2 weeks later we got a letter from them stating we were out of the contract. We haven't been billed again It can be done if the owners are willing to work with you.

We found a new studio which is great and no 3rd party billing nor contract as of now.

Good luck!

 

[CF'er]

You are at the mercy of the karate studio. How long do you have left on your contract? You may be able to negotiate a fee to get out of it. Without seeing it there is really no way to tell you who is correct.

 

[NYCDiane]

You are NOT "at the mercy of the studio". I had an almost identical situation several years ago and I didn't have to pay a penny to get out of the contract. Is your contract/payments going through "Educational Funding"? If so, I'll dig through my stuff and find the letter I sent. You can send the same one and they'll never bother you again, it won't hit your credit report, and you'll be fine.