Is An Eviction A Breach Of Contract?

Posted on: 1 December 2021

A lease is a contract. That means that if either the landlord or tenant doesn't follow the lease, that's a breach of contract. The law gives you a number of rights if the other person has violated their lease contract.

What is an Eviction?

An eviction is a specific legal proceeding to remedy a breach of contract by a tenant. If a tenant doesn't follow their lease, the landlord generally has the right to evict the tenant.

Getting an eviction means that the tenant has to move out, but the landlord can't just kick the tenant out. The landlord has to go to court and get an eviction order from a judge in order to do an eviction properly. Otherwise, the tenant can sue the landlord.

How Can a Tenant Breach a Lease Contract?

There are a number of ways a tenant can breach a lease contract. The most common is not paying rent on time. Other ways include making too much noise or having too many vehicles on the property. In a commercial lease, a tenant might breach a lease contract by engaging in a type of business not allowed by the lease because it competes with other tenants.

In any breach of contract, the facts of what happened may be in dispute. There may also be unclear terms in the lease contract or disputes about how the lease terms apply to the facts. That's why it's important to have an attorney review any breach of contract cases.

Does an Eviction Mean the Landlord Breaches the Contract?

Since an eviction is allowed under the contract, the landlord can't breach the contract by evicting the tenant if the landlord does the eviction properly. However, the landlord may lose some of their rights under the lease, such as being able to collect rent until the end of the lease if the tenant has to leave sooner.

Are There Alternatives to an Eviction?

There are several alternatives to eviction. The parties might agree that there wasn't actually a breach of contract or they might decide to allow the other to fix the breach. This might mean one party agrees to pay the other money.

In some cases, the parties might want to renegotiate their contract. For example, the tenant might be struggling to pay rent because the entire economy is bad, so the landlord wouldn't be able to find a new tenant without reducing the rent.

To learn more about the violations of a lease contract, contact a local breach of contract law firm, such as Moss & Tapia Law LLC, today.

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