How can I end my lease before its term?

Assignment and sublease: the difference

Assignment transfers the lease to the incoming tenant: you leave the contract and stop answering for it going forward. Sublease keeps you a party: you remain liable to the lessor.

For anyone leaving permanently, assignment is almost always the right route. Many tenants sublet out of unfamiliarity and stay bound to a dwelling they have left.

In both cases the procedure is the same: notify the lessor, give the name and address of the person, and request consent (article 1870).

The 15 days, and silence that means consent

This is the most useful rule on the page. The lessor may not refuse without serious cause. And where they refuse, they must give you the reasons within 15 days of receiving the notice.

Failing that, they are deemed to have consented (article 1871). A landlord's silence therefore works in the tenant's favour — the opposite of what most people assume.

Hence the importance of proof of receipt. Send the notice so the exact date can be established: it starts the 15 days.

Serious cause is not mere inconvenience. Vague concerns about the incoming tenant, or wanting the unit back to relet it higher, do not qualify.

When a lease can be resiliated

The Code provides specific situations in which a tenant may resiliate the current lease (article 1974):

— where they are allocated low-rental housing; — where they are relocated to an equivalent dwelling by a court decision; — where they can no longer occupy the dwelling because of a handicap; — and, for an elderly person, where they are permanently admitted to a CHSLD, an intermediate resource, a private seniors' residence providing the care their condition requires, or another lodging facility.

Outside those cases, a change of job, a separation or buying a house give no right to resiliate. That is where assignment of lease becomes essential.

When it is the landlord who wants to end it

A lessor may obtain resiliation where the tenant is more than three weeks late paying rent. They may also obtain it where the tenant frequently pays late and the lessor suffers serious injury as a result (article 1971).

Two points matter for the tenant. First, resiliation is not automatic: it is obtained from the tribunal. Second, paying the arrears before the hearing often changes the outcome.

An occasional delay of a few days does not meet those conditions, whatever a strongly worded notice says.

What a lease clause cannot do

Many leases contain clauses prohibiting assignment, imposing a penalty for early departure, or charging an administration fee to review an incoming tenant.

The Code declares without effect any clause of a residential lease that departs from the provisions on assignment and sublease, among others (article 1893). An outright ban on assigning is therefore inoperative.

Before paying a penalty demanded for leaving, have the clause checked. It frequently turns out to be worth nothing.

The practical steps

Find a serious, solvent incoming tenant — that is what deprives the lessor of grounds to refuse. Then send a written notice giving the name, address and desired start date.

Keep proof of sending and of receipt, and count the 15 days from receipt.

If the lessor refuses on a ground you consider not serious, or lets the deadline pass and objects afterwards, the Tribunal administratif du logement decides.