Legal Question in Business Law in New Hampshire

Re: Lease of business equipment

Hi - Taking your inquiry at face value, your husband signed a four-year lease for the use of business equipment. If he did in fact sign a 4-yr lease then he would have no right to cancel the agreement without paying some kind of cancellation or buyout fee. The lease agreement probably allows for continued use of the equipment beyond the 4-yr term, at the agreed-upon rate or charge (or in some cases a reduced charge), not unlike holding over as a tenant after the lease term has expired, the tenancy then becomes month-to-month unless there is some kind of automatic renewal.

Should the company have contacted you to inform you the lease had expired or was due to expire - yes - but they may not have had a legal obligation to do so. And when the lease expired and you made no effort to return the equipment and terminate the lease agreement, they simply continued with it pending further notice from you, the lessee.

Having said all of this, my advice to you is to review the lease agreement very carefully, look for a notice provision that the lease is due to expire. That's probably your best bet.

Good luck, I hope that you're able to recover at least some of your payments to the leasing company.

Regards -

Len Foy