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Mom has a lease for her apartment but the lease holder says she must complete her lease but she can't now because she must move to a higher level of care, she now needs assisted living... can the lease be broken because of her needing a higher level of care or does she have to pay rent for both places for months?

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1. Check the lease terms addressing lease termination and see if there are any health related, or any "extraordinary circumstances" clauses. Look for lead-in language something to the effect of "notwithstanding anything herein to the contrary...."

2. You can try checking your state's statutes to see if there are precedents that override lease termination justifications. Do some quick googling on "name of state", lease termination, and "health", "age", and similar topics. This isn't always fruitful, but you never know when you'll get some links that are on point.

3. You can go to one of the local senior center or other community center "ask an attorney" sessions and get some quick legal advice on this. There are quite a few communities in my area that do have these quick and easy sessions for folks to get some basic legal guidance.
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As unfortunate as that situation is, no, she cannot break the lease because of her medical issues. take a good look at the lease and see if it provides for a breaking-the-lease out. Sometimes leases will say, for instance, that you forfeit your security deposit and must pay a one- or two-month penalty. If you find something like that in the lease, expect to live by it. If there's nothing there, then, in a good spirited way, negotiate with the landlord. I urge you not to be adversarial. The landlord isn't the enemy.

As you negotiate, remind the LL that we're coming into a popular season to rent...tell her that the apartment will be available for showing and will keep it neat and clean. Explain that mom has to move to assisted living and cannot afford the rent on the apartment for more than a month. Try to work it out.

From the landlord's perspective, the LAST thing he wants is for your mom to physically move out most of her things, NOT turn over the apartment and have to resolve the issue in landlord/tenant court.

Depending on how much money is involved, you may want to pay an attorney to negotiate this for you. Just FYI, I am not an attorney.
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Forgot to check your location, which I just did. CA may have some elder law programs that offer free advice for seniors. Michigan has an Elder Law service by which qualified seniors can get free legal advice. I've contacted them more than few times and found them very knowledgeable and helpful.

If CA has any kind of elder law agency or division, start there. I'm guessing they might be the best place to provide an answer.

Your local Area Agency on Aging might also have some advice to share.
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Find another tenant for the landlord and he may agree to break the lease. The lease remains in force unless a new tenant moves in. That's the easiest way out.
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Taking a different look at this.....what is moms source of income & does mom have assets? Mom is going to have to pay for AL or NH, what is she going to use to pay for it? Is mom judgement proof?

If all mom has for monthly income is SS or other governmental retirement, that is protected income and cannot be seize or have a judgement placed against it. Now the $ mom has saved up, this $ could be but if this amount is smallish it's going to be spent down pretty fast to pay for her AL or NH so there will be nothing left there in pretty short order. Someone in these situations are likely judgement proof.

If she breaks the lease and apt owners come after her for the remaining months, they will have to go to court to get a judgement against her; have her served; pay to have it renewed, etc. Companies who own multiple apt complexes have legal who do this routinely. Smaller ones usually dont and have to bear the costs & time......so often dont. Judgements are all fine & dandy IF there is $ or assets for the judgement to be placed on. But if mom has nothing, well just too bad for the judgement holder. Personally I'd try to work something out but if apt owners aren't wanting to work with mom and mom walks on the contract there probably not much they can do. Just make sure that you personally do not sign off on or agree to anything in all this.

Having funds to pay for the facility needs to be priority número uno.

If mom is on the cusp of going into a facility, & you don't have DPOA & MPOA get those done ASAP. Good luck in all this.
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Check with the landlord, as depending on how long your Mom had rented in that building maybe her rent is low in comparison to other tenants, and the landlord would be more than happy to get 30 or 60 days notice so that the landlord can ask for higher rent to the next tenant. Doesn't hurt to ask.
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not the same situation but my son and dil were able to get out of their lease by working with their landlord - there were some anxiety issues plus also they'd leased it in the first place with the idea their baby daughter would be coming home from the hospital and they'd been told they needed a bigger place but that didn't happen and it wasn't in a good neighborhood anyway plus was needing a lot of work they were insisting be done that they weren't wanting to do, so ultimately even though they were the best renters they'd had as far as paying their rent; good renters also expect good landlords, which they didn't want to be, so they were willing to let them go
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