Q: I’m an active-duty Army sergeant. My wife, who lived in Maryland, and I married last month, and now she’d like to join me at my current military relocation home. But her landlord says that because I wasn’t on her lease, he doesn’t have to let her out of the lease, and he’s claiming that she needs to give 60 days’ notice plus pay two months’ rent. Don’t we qualify for treatment under the Servicemembers’ Civil Relief Act (SCRA)? –Sgt. Rowland
A: The SCRA allows service members who are called to active duty to terminate a lease (after the service member gives notice to the landlord, it expires 30 days after the date rent is next due). If your wife had entered into the lease, then joined the Army (or been called to active duty), she could have invoked this rule. But she’s not the one being called to duty; she’s trying to get out of a lease in order to join her active-duty new husband. I don’t think she can take advantage of the SCRA in this situation.
However, her landlord is not right when it comes to the consequences of breaking a lease in Maryland. Maryland landlords must take reasonably prompt steps to rerent a unit once a lease-breaking tenant leaves; after that, the responsibility for rent for the balance of the lease ends. This means that a landlord can’t just say, “You will owe me for X number of months.” The tenant’s obligation will depend on how soon a replacement takes over (or how soon a replacement could have taken over, had the landlord taken reasonable steps to find a suitable one). This rule is contained in Maryland Real Property Section 8-207.
Incidentally, the law specifies that these rights cannot be waived by the tenant, even if a lease contains a clause purporting to waive them. If the landlord’s policy is contained in the lease, it’s invalid.
Your wife should have a talk with the landlord, armed with a copy of this law. Once she moves out, management has a duty to list and show her unit, though it doesn’t have an obligation to rent it in advance of other units. If the unit remains vacant for a month or so, that’s all the rent you owe; but if the market is soft and even reasonable efforts on the part of the landlord fail to land a new tenant, you could end up responsible for more months’ rent.
If the landlord sticks to his guns, refuses to rerent, and attempts to arbitrarily stick you with 60 days’ notice plus two months’ rent (that’s four months’ rent!), expect that he will keep your security deposit at a minimum (and possibly sue for the rest in small claims court, but when the tenant is out of state, practically speaking this is unlikely). Unfortunately, you’ll need to sue in small claims to get the deposit back, which will be inconvenient if you’re at a distance. Hopefully, your wife can convince the landlord to follow the law.
