Legal Question in Landlord & Tenant Law in California

You can't legally just "get out" of a lease except when a property is deemed uninhabitable by the authorities, or the lease has an early termination provision that you comply with. Any other early termination or abandonment of the lease is a breach of contract. So really all you can do is work with the landlord to minimize his/her/its losses due to your breach, and try to negotiate an agreement for your departure instead of them suing you for unlawful detainer or breach of the lease.

The one thing going for you is that if you really just can't possibly pay the rent, what I call the "no blood from a stone rule" applies. If you offer them the easiest departure and anything you can do to maximize how fast they can get a new tenant in the unit, there really is no point in not working with you since suing you will get them nothing if you're broke.