Legal Question in Administrative Law in California

Re: breaking a lease

Breaking a lease is just a specialized form of breaching a contract. Here are three or four ways to do it, together with what to expect in the way of expense:

1. Find someone else to be a substitute tenant, and assign the balance of the lease to her or him. This is also called subleasing or subletting, but if it is for the entire remaining term of the lease, it is really an assignment rather than a sublease. Most leases allow assignment with the landlord's permission and state that such permission or approval may not unreasonably be withheld or delayed. If you handle it this way, you have the task of finding a suitable assignee, but if the assignee faithfully carries out the terms of the lease, you should have zero expense and get your security deposit back at the end of the lease, or immediately if the assignee is willing to advance it to you.

2. Your daughter or you can notify the landlord of your/her intent to move out on a certain date, then move out and surrender the keys. You will remain liable for the unpaid balance of the rent, but the landlord immediately assumes the burden of finding a replacement tenant. If the landlord does find a replacement tenant, your obligation for further rental payments then ceases. If the landlord is unable to find a replacement tenant despite reasonable efforts, you remain on the hook for all the lost rent, and will probably be sued in small claims court. This limitation of damages to what is lost despite an attempt to re-rent is called "mitigation of damages."

3. If she moves out and stops paying rent without notice and without returning the keys, the rent meter keeps running and you will probably be sued, sooner or later, for all or a large part of the unpaid rent on the entire lease.

So, the more you can do to help the landlord keep the place occupied by someone who pays the rent, the less you will have to pay yourselves.