A couple months ago, my tenant gave me notice she will be looking for another place.
She has been renting my house for 3 years.

She emailed me this morning and said she will be moving out at the end of the month and was packing things from the hall closet and noticed "black mold" growing in the closet and also on items in the closet. Probably coming from the bathroom.

She goes on to say "I have reported this to public health so that I can have testing done to see if the mold is the cause of my illness for the past year."

I'm not sure what her illness is/has been but in one email she mentioned she was seeing an oncologist so that's not good.

It sounds as if she is going to ask for damages/sue? ugh!!!

Can she do that? Am I liable even if I had no idea at all about "mold" until this morning's email??

Any advice?

The other factor is that she's been in the unit a long time, the issue was noted in a closet, and I'm going to assume has never reported anything before now. Not that you won't still have to spend money on lawyers and dealing with this, but lack of landlord responsiveness is usually a big factor. So get your lawyer's advice first, but I'd imagine speedy remediation upon being notified may help you.

Thanks for the replies.

I think I will get my own mold test done ASAP.

The first time this has been mentioned was yesterday in an email. I have always been responsive on any issue that pops up, so that is not an issue. I even gave her a break a few months ago, she said she was going to be late on rent for the next month and said she would pay late fees. She had emptied most of her savings to pay for her college moving into her own place for college out-of-town, medical fees, etc I told her don't worry about it and she was behind rent for 2 months but got caught up. She had always been early with rent for the prior 3 years.

Below is a pic of the small hallway closet that has the issue. On the other side of that wall is the guest bathroom, so there must be a leak in the pipes inside the shared wall. I imagine she hasn't noticed it before because the closet had been stuffed top to bottom with her things.

She's moving out at the end of the month. I think I will get the test done tomorrow or Tuesday if possible and then have my contractor got over there and remove the sheetrock and see what is going on.

Wait, she used the closet for three years and is just now mentioning it? How are you as a landlord supposed to even know about it if it's full of her stuff?

This smells like a money grab for her. Doubtful mold in essentially a storage closet caused her "sickness". Other factors in her life caused it and she's just looking to point her finger at someone to pay for it.

I agree that mold can be an overblown issue, and don't think this is negligent on your part at all, but I'd have the contractor over there first thing Monday morning cutting that out, finding they problem, fixing the problem, and patching it back.

Mold can grow pretty quick. I've seen similar similar amounts after only a few weeks of a leak

Update?

The OP has this xposted in home improvement and has been updating there. Dont know if they frequent over here.

The tenant isn't available to let in the inspector all week due to having to work until 7pm every day.

I've been in Vegas on business all week so I can't let the inspector in, so i had scheduled an inspection for Friday.... but my flight back home to Houston got cancelled. When it rains, it pours!