Legal Question in Landlord & Tenant Law in Illinois

I moved into a apartment with my husband and our good friend and all three of us signed a twelve month lease. Four months into the lease our roomate wanted to move out and our landlord only charged her a hundred dollars to do so. Our landlord said he would carry our lease over so we could move into another one of his apartments. Since then we have been finding out disturbing things about our landlord, he never fixes anything that is included in his own lease he says we are not responsible for as his tenants, and even police in my area say to not rent from him. So I signed the lease and since my husband could not be present at the time, I was told to take the lease home for him to sign but my landlord has not signed it yet. So we have the evidence of this lease without his signature so can we legally move out? Also the landlord might say we have responsibilities to hold with the other lease but he has signs up for rent and why should we have to pay the remainder of the lease price when he charged her a hundred dollars only to break her portion?


Asked on 11/05/10, 9:51 am

1 Answer from Attorneys
Stephen Messutta

First, it sounds like your landlord has been treating you pretty fairly, so where is all this negative information coming from? If it has nothing to do with your experience with your landlord, you are listening to what amounts to slander!!!

Now on to the lease. Your current lease remains in effect until you enter into a new lease. If your landlord let the roommate off the current lease with your approval on promise to rent you and your husband something else less costly that you can afford or is smaller or both, he is apparently living up to his promise and you have a choice: accept the deal, sign the new lease and move on (and make sure the current lease is torn up), or break the current lease for apparently no reason, and that would seem to be a problem. Maybe there are more facts here but off the top of my head that's what it sounds like.

The response given is not intended to create, nor does it create an ongoing duty to respond to questions. The response does not form an attorney-client relationship, nor is it intended to be anything other than the educated opinion of the author. It should not be relied upon as legal advice. The response given is based upon the limited facts provided by the person asking the question. To the extent additional or different facts exist, the response might possibly change. Attorney is currently licensed to practice law actively only in the State of Illinois, inactively in Florida. Responses are based solely on Illinois law unless stated otherwise.

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Answered on 11/10/10, 10:05 am


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