How to get out of a lease with a roommate

Even the best plans can fail, and you may have to get out of a lease with a roommate , despite your best intentions. Here’s how to minimize the fallout: Give as much notice to your landlord as you. Unfortunately, if you’re a renter , you can’t remove someone’s name from your lease. That means if your roommate or ex wants to stay, or keep coming back periodically, and leave their belongings, there’s nothing you can do.

Your landlord is under no obligation to remove your roommate ’s name from the lease.

If your lease agreement is a term lease , and you only have a few months left, consider paying the landlord the amount remaining to let you get out of the agreement. Communicate with the landlord to. Depends on exactly how the lease was written, however a typical lease would holds everyone equally liable. The landlord could care less where the money comes from. In order to protect your tenancy and rental history it is often best to come.

If you or older, you need to get your plan together. Open a checking and savings.

Bring him to a shelter or rescue group AFTER discussing the situation with your roommates. But please, stop being a dick about the whole thing. If you are on the lease agreement and want to leave your lease early while your co-tenant (s) stays, you will want to give your landlord notice and ask that they or your co-tenant (s) find a new tenant. Once a new tenant moves in, your obligations should end. The information for this answer was found on our Breaking a Lease Early.

Legally, you cannot force a roommate off a lease unless they were convicted of a crime. That being sai landlords may agree to change the terms of the lease including an amendment to exclude a problem tenant. Lease agreements signed by co-tenants are almost always written with the stipulation of roommates being “jointly and severally liable.

Legally Breaking a Lease Because of a Roommate In many cases, there are not abundant provisions for allowing a tenant to break a lease legally based on the activity of his or her roommates. The tenant will generally have to show proof of legal “hardship” and that can be difficult. Give a deadline by which the roommate (and the roommate ’s personal property) must be out of the rental. Even though the roommate isn’t an official tenant , you should give at least the same amount of notice required to end a month-to-month tenancy. In most states, the notice period is days.

Contact the landlor discuss the situation and try to negotiate a settlement. Assuming your roommate is a tenant of record (more on that below), he or she maintains a distinct legal relationship with the property owner or landlord and must abide by the terms of the lease.

While general messiness is not usually cause for eviction, late rent payments and unapproved pets likely are, so alert your landlord. This is addition to the legal consequences of all tenants breaking a lease and leaving early). When cotenants split, there can be serious consequences beyond hurt feelings. Your roommate has master tenant status, meaning the lease exists only between the landlord and your roommate , and you are their subtenant.

This will be determined by state law. You can’t evict them. To get your fair share of the security deposit back, you’ll need to work this out with your roommates.

Getting out of the apartment (if your roommate isn’t willing to leave) is a legitimate option. Breaking your lease should ideally be a last ditch effort to get out of a negative situation. Determine cause for evicting your roommate. Often times, you can’t just evict a roommate because you don’t like the person anymore.

If there was no lease agreement, then you need to have sufficient legal cause to evict the person. Whatever the situation with the roommate, you have agreed to pay a rent amount to the owner of the property. If you have a written lease, read it — each tenant, typically, is individually responsible for all the rent.

If your roommate (the “tenant”) throws you out and changes the locks, there is very little, if anything, you can do to get back into the apartment as you don’t legally have a right to live in the unit. To protect yourself, you should talk to your roommate about contacting the landlord and becoming a tenant in common, or a co-tenant. If the roommate is named on the lease , he cannot get out of the lease early and is legally responsible for his share.

Negotiate with the Landlord As a matter of law, you cannot force the landlord to take your name off the lease until the lease ends.