If a tenant dies and the place where they live is not under a joint lease, the lease passes to a member of the tenant’s household who was living there when the tenant died and does not have their own housing. If that person is not the tenant’s spouse, registered partner, parent, sibling, son-in-law, daughter-in-law, child or grandchild, the lease passes to them only if the landlord agrees.
If more than one member of the tenant’s household is eligible to take over the lease, the rights and obligations under the lease pass to all of them jointly and severally. However, if a member of the tenant’s household is the tenant’s relative in the descending order (i.e. a child, grandchild, etc.), this person has a preferential right to have the rights and obligations under the lease transferred to them.
Anyone eligible to take over the lease may notify the landlord in writing, within 1 month of the tenant’s death, that they do not wish to continue the lease. The lease ends on the date on which the landlord receives this notification.
Once the lease has been transferred, it ends no later than 2 years after the date of transfer, unless the person to whom the lease has been transferred is 70 years or older on the date of transfer. Likewise, this 2-year rule does not apply if the person to whom the lease has been transferred is not yet 18 years old on the date of transfer. In this case, the lease ends no later than on the person’s 20th birthday, unless otherwise agreed between the landlord and the tenant.
If rights and obligations under a lease do not pass to a member of a deceased tenant’s household, they are transferred to the tenant’s heirs. The people sharing a household with the tenant until his or her death are liable jointly and severally with the tenant’s heir for lease-related debts incurred prior to the tenant’s death.