Assistance with rental disputes: Deposit and rental problems

Questioner

Good day, We have wished to terminate our rental contract in writing. The landlord now says he wants to transfer the deposit via the bank. We paid the rent monthly in cash, which the landlord always collected. This has always gone very well. But in the past few months, a few things have happened, I have also talked about this on the forum. The trust in the landlord has completely disappeared because of this. We are now in conflict, again, the landlord wants us to sign and hand over the keys so that he can then transfer the deposit to the bank account within a month. We don't trust this because he doesn't have any bank account numbers for us and because we always had to pay the rent in cash. Now he wants to call in a bailiff etc. because, according to him, we have failed to do so. What can we do now?

Lawyer

And why did you default then? I advise in this situation to suspend the last month's rent because there is a big chance that you will not get the deposit back. How much deposit do you have outstanding?