Legal Question in Landlord & Tenant Law in California

Terminate my lease

We signed a lease in may. The lease was a standard month to month document. The landlord wanted a 1 year lease on the house. She just wrote year to year lease on the top of the document. As we were reviewing the lease we noticed down further in the document in 1 of the clauses that it said that any party may terminate the lease with a 30 day written notice at any time. The landlord did not cross that line out. We let her know that we wanted to move out and she said that we were not entitled to a 30 day notice. Our reason for moving is because the basement has 8 inches of water in it. (it did have about 2 ft. we pumped out as much as we could)and it has visible mold in it. we took my daughter to the er to have a cough checked out that started just after we moved in. they said that it was due to allergies that was triggered by the mold. 3 days later i took her for a 2nd opinion and that dr said that she had pneumonia really bad and that it was due to the mold spores in the air. she said that it was critical to our daughters health that it was cleaned up or that we move. we let our landlord know and she has done nothing to clean it. Are either of those two reasons grounds for terminating our lease early?


Asked on 9/07/06, 8:57 pm

1 Answer from Attorneys
Philip Iadevaia Law Offices of Philip A. Iadevaia

Re: Terminate my lease

If the property is not habitable and the LL was notified and refused to cure the problems within a reasonable time, then the LL has breached the lease and you have no obligation to continue paying rent. As far as breaching the lease early, if you are within the 6 month period, you're still under contract, but the LL may have waived their rights under the contract by their own prior breach, leaving you with no further obligation to serve out the lease term. As for the changes that make the lease a 12 month lease, it will have to be determined that you agreed to the LL's hand-written changes. Good luck.

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Answered on 9/08/06, 11:05 am


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