I was literally holding back laughter on the phone with him like "dude, don't just SHOW me all your cards, at least bluff".

So I'm going to go to him and say what makes me happy is to stay put and not go to court and not owe money. If he's like "but money" then I'ma be like let's go to court because I don't even know if I legally owe you.

Now to protect against any retaliation I'm willing to put something into writing essentially saying I'll skate for a few months and then will move out at some date............long down the road.

Hopefully that will make it amicable. What's wild is his good friend is my old employer, and I took him to task similarly because he was trying to pay me a salary with no overtime. I called him out and took a settlement because I didn't want to deal with the court process. BUT in this scenario I can actually leverage a better outcome OUTSIDE of court, so I'ma take it all.