Transfer of lease following death

Transfer of lease following death

Your reaction to our previous column provides an opportunity to point out that the lease does not automatically terminate on the death of the tenant, but continues with his heirs. Only the heirs, but not the landlord, then have the right to terminate the lease early. Given the state of the property market, this provision, which was intended to protect heirs from an unnecessary burden, has lost some of its usefulness, since their concern today is rather to be able to legally take over the rented flat. Although the landlord is not entitled to invoke the tenant's death to terminate the lease early, this does not mean that he is deprived of his right to terminate the contract in compliance with the legal and contractual terms and deadlines, or on the basis of just cause. This means that, regardless of the number of years you have lived in the same flat, you can only use estate planning instruments to organise the allocation of the property among your heirs to a certain extent. You cannot force the landlord to change the contractual relationship during your lifetime by transferring the lease of your flat to a third party without your consent. What's more, while you can certainly stipulate in your will or contract of inheritance that a particular heir alone will be authorised to enjoy the flat, including your grandchildren in your last will and testament, if applicable, this provision will only have an effect within the community of heirs but will not have any binding effect on a third party, in this case the landlord. It should be noted that it is also possible for the heirs to agree to offer a sublease to one of your grandchildren, but this solution is by definition only temporary, and is subject to fairly strict rules.It should be remembered that all tenants are obliged to inform the landlord of any significant changes in their circumstances (marriage, divorce, etc). Even more so, heirs are obliged to inform the landlord of the tenant's death. They must also clearly inform the landlord of their intention to occupy the rented property, and seek the landlord's consent if they intend to allocate the flat to one of the grandchildren.