I tried googling this and found that it is probably illegal to throw away someone else's mail but the only thing I found from the US postal service itself was instructions on how to return the mail with no mention of a legal obligation to return the mail. I do know that if it says "or current resident" I'm allowed to toss it but it usually doesn't.
My situation is that I have been living in my current house for 2 years now and I get mail addressed to the previous resident almost weekly, sometimes more. We have informed the post office several times that they no longer live here but the mail still comes. So far we have obliged in writing "not at this address" on the envelope and leaving in the mailbox (although sometimes our postal carrier just ignores it and puts new mail on top of it several days in a row).
I'm getting tired of it though, I know it probably sounds petty and lazy but I don't carry a pen with me to the mailbox so every time I get their mail I need to bring it back inside, write "not at this address" on it, and then bring it back out to the mailbox. It takes me at least 5 minutes to bring their letters inside, write "not at this address" on them, and then return them to the mailbox so assuming 1 letter per week (which honestly is likely a conservative estimate), in the past 2 years I've probably spent more than 8 hours simply dealing with returning someone else's mail. And usually it appears to almost certainly just be junk mail. Are there any sort of limitations on how many times I am obligated to provide unpaid labor for the us postal service?
