Wondering how you can get out of a lease early in the state of Ohio? Sometimes breaking a lease in Ohio can be difficult. By looking closely at the Ohio lease laws and regulations, you’ll find there are a handful of laws in place concerning when you can break a lease without paying additional costs.
When you sign an Ohio lease agreement, you plan on living in your apartment for a specified period of months or years. But we all know life can occasionally get in the way and end up forcing you to leave your apartment before you expect to. Or, perhaps the landlord’s duty was not fulfilled, and you are dealing with hassles of safety code violations. If you are forced to move out, you could end up incurring thousands of dollars in costs through lost security deposits, remaining back rent payments, and other early termination fees.
With a fixed-term lease, you are agreeing to stay for a set amount of time. When breaking a lease in Ohio, you are breaking this agreement. But depending on the situation, you may be able to break your lease without any extra liability. How much does it cost to break a lease in Ohio? Keep reading to find out how to break a lease in Ohio!
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How to Break a Lease in Ohio – Legal Reasons for Breaking a Lease in Ohio
Have you ever wondered how to break a lease in Ohio? The good news is that there are many ways to breaking a lease in Ohio, and if you need to break a lease early, there are also ways where you can minimize the fees you will have to pay.
Our guess is you don’t want to have to hire a landlord tenant attorney or comb through Ohio landlord tenant law just to break a lease in Ohio. But, we bet you also want to get your security deposit back. Thankfully, there are a few ways to lease a lease early and not pay rent based on your job, key rights, and other factors. If you want to break your lease early and not pay rent, check out the different rules below:
Military Members Can Often Break Their Lease Legally
Ohio lease laws and federal law under the Servicemembers Civil Relief Act say active duty and military duty service members have a legal right for breaking a lease in Ohio as long as they are a part of the uniformed services. Along with the armed forces, this includes government branches like the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the Public Health Services commissioned corps, and activated National Guard members. If you are called for active military service, you are allowed to break a lease early when you are relocating away from that area.
How to Break a Lease for Active Military Duty
To begin this process, you must give written notice to your landlord regarding your plans to terminate your apartment lease because of military responsibilities so they can find a new tenant. Once you provide written notice and your landlord gets the letter, your lease will end 30 days after the next date your rent is due. This is part of the Servicemembers Civil Relief Act. This only applies for active military duty and does not mean that any military member can move without penalty unless they are being called away for active military duty.
Ohio Lease Termination Over Privacy Rights
How can you break your lease in Ohio without penalty? A lot of it depends on your lease term, whether there is an early termination clause, and whether you can find a new tenant to replace you. However, there are also ways for legal justification or ending a lease term without paying the remaining rent when breaking a lease in Ohio.
Illegal Landlord Entry
If your landlord violates tenant rights or your privacy rights, breaking a lease in Ohio before moving in or afterward is easy. According to Ohio landlord tenant law, breaking lease agreements is allowed if your landlord enters your home without at least a 24-hour notice.
Your landlord is legally required to tell you or make reasonable efforts to tell you when he or she will enter the rental property at least 24 hours in advance before you can be breaking a lease in Ohio. This is spelled out in Ohio landlord tenant laws. Otherwise, they can face legal consequences.
If your landlord comes into your home without giving this notice, they have legally violated your rights to privacy. According to the laws surrounding Ohio rental agreements, without proper notice, you are then allowed to move out and break your lease in Ohio.
Breaking Lease Due to Fear of Safety in Ohio
Can you break a lease in Ohio because you fear for your safety? The law says you can.
Habitable Housing in Ohio
You get an Ohio rental lease for a reason. When you rent an apartment or house, you want a safe, comfortable place to live. If your landlord doesn’t provide you with habitable housing, they are essentially violating this basic agreement, and then breaking a lease in Ohio is possible.
According to state and local housing codes, your landlord is legally required to give you habitable housing that is secure and livable before you break a lease in Ohio. If you are dealing with less than this standard, Ohio law says you can break your lease in Ohio for all practical purposes when they offer a home too unlivable to use.
Failing Health and Safety Codes
If a landlord fails health and safety codes, you have no additional financial responsibility for paying rent to them (Landlord Tenant Laws: Ohio Revised Code Ann. § 5321.07) and can break a lease in Ohio. But you will have to follow specific procedures before you can break a lease early and move out, so check with the legal code or a landlord tenant attorney to ensure you are completing each step properly. If you don’t follow the law to the letter, you may end up paying for breaking a lease in Ohio after all.
Serious Repair Problems
There is an exception you could use that fits this same situation. According to Ohio rental laws, breaking a lease early can be done immediately if there is a serious repair problem with your rental property. To be serious enough, the repair problem must be something like your rental unit lacking essential services like water, electricity, or heat, which are crucial to a safe environment. You will need to show proof and provide your landlord with written notice to break a lease in Ohio.
Landlord Harassment
In Ohio, law, tenants may have the right to break a lease for their rental unit if they experience landlord harassment. Landlord harassment can include actions like entering the property without proper notice, making repeated threats, shutting off utilities, or interfering with a tenant’s ability to live peacefully in the rental.
Ohio law requires landlords to provide a safe and habitable living environment and to respect tenant rights. If harassment occurs, tenants should document the incidents, notify the landlord in writing, and give them a chance to address the behavior before they break a lease in Ohio.
Lease Termination for Landlord Harassment
If the harassment persists, tenants may be able to terminate the lease without penalty by citing the landlord’s breach of the rental agreement. Then breaking a lease in Ohio would be allowed. It’s also advisable to consult with an attorney or a local tenant advocacy group to ensure compliance with Ohio landlord-tenant laws before you break a lease in Ohio.
Unfortunately, cases like this can get complicated. Even if you provide written notice before breaking a lease in Ohio, many landlords will become frustrated over finding a replacement tenant and may even pursue small claims court. It’s always best to have a paper trail of the landlord harassment, so save your photos, texts, or any police reports you may have had to file.
Broken Lease for Eviction
Can a landlord break a lease in Ohio? When a landlord breaks your lease, it is known as an eviction. They may do this for a number of reasons before inviting in a new tenant. This can be because of unpaid rent, not moving out after the lease ends, or a tenant break in on property. Most landlords try and work with the tenant before filing an eviction and forcing breaking a lease in Ohio.
Constructive Eviction
There is a legal term called a “constructive eviction,” which is used at times when you aren’t physically evicted. While a landlord may not physically remove you from the property, they do things that make it impossible for you to live there without breaking a lease. This can be hard to prove in your written lease, so you will want to find legal assistance to manage this broken lease situation.
With a constructive eviction in Ohio, the landlord may have done things like turning off the utilities or changing the locks, so you can’t get in. Or they could have compromised the safety of the living space by removing the doors or windows. All of these actions constitute a constructive eviction under federal law and mean you are legally justified for breaking your lease without having to pay anything more in rent. Unfortunately, your landlord can still try and take you to small claims court or make your life harder due to the lease termination when breaking a lease in Ohio.
Breaking Ohio Lease Agreement for Domestic Violence
In Ohio, tenants who are victims of domestic violence have legal protections that may allow them to break a lease without penalty. Under Ohio law, if a tenant or their household member is a victim of domestic violence, they may terminate the lease early by providing the landlord with written notice, along with a copy of a police report or a protection order.
How to Break a Lease for Domestic Violence
When breaking a lease in Ohio for domestic violence, the notice must typically be given within 30 days of the incident. Tenants are still responsible for paying rent up to the date of termination, but they cannot be penalized for breaking the lease due to safety concerns. These protections are designed to help survivors leave unsafe living situations without additional financial responsibility.
Tips and Best Practices for Ohio Leases
Understanding the process behind a question like “How can you legally break a lease in Ohio?” is important. Once you find the answer, you must go through the proper steps and procedures when breaking a lease in Ohio. Otherwise, your landlord could say you have broken your lease for a reason that isn’t covered under the legal code, and if you’re unable to prove otherwise, you’ll be liable for paying the remaining charges. Keep writing to find out how to break a lease legally in Ohio.
Get Everything in Writing
The goal is to avoid legal consequences, and in order to do that, you should keep everything. The first tip for breaking a lease in Ohio is to document everything. If you have to deal with a lack of heat in your apartment, send your landlord an email about the problem instead of simply calling them over the phone. This way, you can show the court when you alerted the landlord to the problem and how long it took to respond.
Save any emails and other correspondence like texts between you and your landlord that violate your lease agreement. Instead of only finding out how to break a lease in Ohio legally, you must also find out how to prove you are breaking it legally. Save copies of your lease agreement, repair bills, emails, and registered mail in case you need them in the future.
Take Photographs
Unfortunately, there can be times when Ohio landlords become disgruntled or vindictive after a tenant leaves their lease agreement. Even if the property wasn’t habitable, they may try to charge you repair costs for issues you didn’t cause. If a landlord tries to charge you for these things, it will simply be their word against yours without proof or evidence. This is especially true when it comes to a tenant’s security deposit.
Even if you stay for the full length of your lease until a new tenant moves into your rental unit, if the landlord fails to give you your security deposit back, they may claim it is because there was damage to the apartment. If you want your security deposit back, make sure you leave the place as you found it, take photos of how you left it, and then at the end of the lease term, you should get your security deposit back.
Whenever you leave an apartment or rental home, always take photographs on the last day. There are unscrupulous landlords in the world, so this is an essential step to protecting yourself. By taking photographs of the property and saving them in your records, you can prove you weren’t the one who caused additional damage.
Read Your Rental Agreement
With Ohio tenant laws, breaking a lease agreement is sometimes possible through loopholes or empty details in your lease in Ohio. Every lease has a lease term, and you may be responsible for the remaining rent should you break a lease early without an early termination clause. There may be times when you want to break a lease or re rent, without having any legal justification for doing so.
In these cases, you should check your rental agreement to see if there are alternatives. You might be able to break a lease if you make reasonable efforts to find a new tenant, for example. Most leases will come with an early termination clause where you will pay rent for a certain amount of time to break the lease.
Even if you can’t find a way to legally break your lease agreement, you can at least see what the repercussions are. Depending on why you are breaking your lease agreement, it may be worth it to lose your deposit or your last month’s full rent payment. And if you have a month-to-month lease in Ohio, you might not have any repercussions anyway.
Finding Ways to Break Your Ohio Lease
Learning the answer to “How can you legally break a lease in Ohio?” is one step toward moving to a new place that is a better fit for your needs. You’ll also need to find out what happens if you are illegally breaking a lease agreement in Ohio. If it is worth it to you, you may decide to simply pay the cost that comes with it when breaking a lease in Ohio.
Reducing Early Termination Fees
To try and reduce your fees from breaking a lease early, you can also:
- Offer to pay some of the remaining rent
- Offer to find a new tenant to take over your lease
- Try to settle the terms with the landlord and forfeit your security deposit
FAQs About How to Break a Lease Early in Ohio
Can You Break a Lease For Medical Reasons in Ohio?
It’s unlikely that medical reasons will allow you to break a lease in Ohio, unless it’s due to unsafe housing, like black mold that isn’t being remedied.
Can I Break My Lease if I Buy a House in Ohio?
No, there is unlikely to be a clause that allows you to break your lease early just because you bought a house.
Moving to a New Place? Krupp Moving Is Here to Help!
Looking at breaking a lease in Ohio? Whether you’re moving out of a rental space or moving locally into a new one, the team at Krupp Moving would love to help with your relocation. From our packing services to our professional team of movers, you’ll be in good hands from the start. Feel free to complete the request a quote form for a free moving estimate or give us a call today at (330) 359-1491.
