Submitted by Anonymous on Wed, 05/06/2009 - 19:31
Posted in
With the economy still hurting, my roommate and I have found that we will need to break our current 2 year lease after the first full year as we will no longer be able to afford the rent. We are intending to give our landlord 90+ days notice. However, in rereading our lease we found that there is no clause regarding if we want to purposefully terminate the lease. The clauses listed explain instances where the landlord may terminate the lease and penalties we may incrue if the landlord terminates said lease. Do we have any basic termination rights?
Break lease without cause
Sorry about your situation, but MA law does not allow you to break your lease in hardship situations. Unless the landlord is not living up to his/her contractual obligations, you are bound by the terms of the contract you signed and may still be responsible for rent until the end of the term.
However, Massachusetts law obligates your landlord to make reasonable efforts to rent the apartment to someone else and, thus, eliminate or reduce your liability for the rent owed for the remaining term of the lease. If you find a suitable person to assume the lease, and the landlord refuses, you may not be liable for the entire term of the lease. Additionally, if you ‘break the lease’ and the landlord does not take reasonable steps to fill the vacancy, you may not be liable for the full term of the lease.
One final note: Just because you think your landlord is not acting reasonably (in accepting a person you find to take over the lease) does not mean a court will agree with you. A landlord is not obligated to rent to the person you nominate to assume your lease. The landlord may have valid reasons for not renting to that person, such as a poor credit history or bad references from former landlords. In short, breaking a lease is risky business. For more information or to post a question, visit our MA Tenant Law Discussion Forum. Good luck, and please tell your friends about The Forum.