Breaking a lease

Factual Questions
1

I realize there can’t be a specific answer to this due to regional laws and specific terms in a given lease, so this is much more of a general question.

I’m starting from the assumption that a lease basically says that the tenants agree to be $x/month for so many months. In return. the landlord agrees they can live in the apartment/house/domicile.

So what happens if, for example, there are 2 people on a lease and one tenant wants to break the lease and move out and the landlord agrees to do so, but the other tenant doesn’t want such a thing? Can the landlord force the remaining tenant to have to pay all the rent?

I’m looking at what happens 6 months down the road when the rent is overdue. Tenant A moved out because they agreed with the landlord to end the lease. Tenant B made no such agreement and stayed. Now the rent is overdue, so the landlord will need to sue to get their money. Are they obligated to come after both tenants to collect?

2

I believe , in my non-lawyer capacity, that joint and several liability is the relevant piece of law. Specifically, the landlord can go after either or both of the tenants if the rent is past due and they can be held responsible. Neither the landlord or leaving tenant can force the staying tenant into a new contract;however, if tenant 1 leaves with a blessing from the landlord, the landlord is fully able to sue the remaining tenant for all back due rent with no regard to the roomie who left.

IANAL, don’t play one on TV, live in a different country than you, and am sleep deprived, so keep that in mind.

3

IANAL but unless each of the renters was renting only half of the location, the remaining tenent would owe all the rent.

4

Also, ISTM a ‘smart’ landlord might at least attempt to tell the leaving roommate ‘yeah, that’s fine, you can go’ without altering the agreement at all. That way, if the other roommate has a problem coming up with rent, the landlord can go after the other roommate as well. Ya know, the one that absconded.
A smart roommate would get the ‘blessing’ in writing and make sure the remaining roommate gets a new contract drawn up before signing at a new place.

5

Now that I think about it, most landlords aren’t going to let the renter out of their contract without a good reason. If there is a good reason I could see them asking the remaining renter to go through the application process again to make sure they can afford it and they don’t end up in the situation you describe. If they don’t make enough on their own to afford to stay there, they may ask them to move out or to move to another, less expensive property that they own.

6

This is the situation where I was wondering if the remaining tenant can force a situation. Tenant B knows they can’t afford the rent alone but doesn’t want to move. They also know Tenant A can’t stay for some reason or another. The landlord is on the side of Tenant A and agrees to break the lease. But since tenant B doesn’t want to break the lease and the landlord doesn’t have any grounds for ending it, what can tenant A or the landlord do?

Tenant A and the landlord are in agreement, but I don’t know if there is anything legal they can do about it. If tenant B gets sued for the rent and loses, can tenant B then come after tenant A?

7

The landlord is not going to be on Tenant A’s side.

In order to let A off the hook, the contract has to be modified; that modification requires approval from all three parties (A, B and landlord). If B refuses to sign a modified lease as a single person, the landlord’s only option is to either enforce it equally on both A and B, or break it for both A and B.

As a former resident manager, my preference was to encourage A (or B) to find a new roommate (C), then execute a new contract with B and C to replace the contract that A and B had. This gave us the best chance for receiving payment on the lease, and we executed it as a new 12-month lease, thereby extending the period of time we’d have that unit under contract. It’s pretty much a win-win.

8

Yep.

Landlord and tenant a have a contract with tenant b. If landlord really wants to help out tenant a they may just have to eat the loss.

Also, tenant b can sue tenant a for breaking the lease with them and leaving them high and dry.

9

This all makes sense, but it does kind of leave tenant A at the mercy of a disgruntled roommate.

Suppose tenant A is a hard working college student who works 2 jobs just to come up with half the rent and utilities. Things are tight, but manageable. Tenant B ends with an addiction of one sort of another and can’t make the rent. Tenant A sees the handwriting on the wall and decides it is time to get out before things get really bad. The landlord knows what is going on and is sympathetic to tenant A. So now the landlord and tenant A both want out, but tenant B sees no incentive to them to end the lease. Either way tenant B can’t make the rent, so why not live there and be responsible for just half the rent, which they won’t bother paying anyway?

10

That’s why you shouldn’t sign a lease with someone you don’t know. Sucks, but there you go.

11

Tenant A is only at the mercy of a contract that tenant A signed willingly and without coercion.

12

I understand. This question was inspired by what is happening to dragongirl. I can see similar situations happening where you and a fiance or someone you think you know really well decide to share a place.

Extrapolating this further, if there were several people on the lease and all but 1, including the landlord, wanted out of the lease the rest of the group is screwed.

13

IIRC from my leasing days…

The landlord will want all the tenants on the lease. Essentially, as others mentioned, they are jointly and severally liable for the entire rent, damages, etc. If A skips town or cannot pay the rent, B is on the hook for the full amount.

A term lease either has an escape clause - i.e. 60 days notice from month end - or it does not. If it does not, then the tenants are on the hook until the end of the lease. However, depending on the circumstances, it can be expensive for the landlord to insist on the letter of the law. There’s the old joke about “lease-breaking party”, have a bask so loud and obnoxious, that the other apartmetns will complain and the landlord would be better off cancelling the lease than allowing repeated noise violations.

From what I recall, it usually boiled down to - the tenants could sublet for the remainder of the lease, and the landlord could not unreasonably block that; or the landlord had to make honest effort to find replacement tenants, and the original tenants were on the hook for any rent until a replacement was found.

If, as the OP seems to discuss, the situation is that one tenant wants or needs to leave - well, sucks to be the other tenant. This is why the landlord wants to put both tenants names on the lease - if A wants to leave, or is tossed in jail, or quits their job, then B better be prepared to find a new roommate or pay the full rent. OTOH, as long as B pays the full rent, the lease is still in force. Obviously, there is no pressure on the landlord to remove A from the lease - he’s just added insurance if B fails to pay.

To rememdy these situations, and “level the field”, IIRC the Ontario laws make some interesting provisions that have really ticked off the landlords - requirements IIRC to add people to lease, cannot deny access, i.e. can’t stop an new boyfriend from moving in, etc. This results in exactly the scenario - the carefully vetted tenant moves out, they have to remove them from the lese, but can’t evict the unreliable boyfriend until he’s missed several rent payments…