Thursday, September 04, 2008

Military tenant rights

One of the most commonly acknowledged differences between military and civilian life is frequent moves and deployments. In recognition of hardships of military service, Congress enacted the Servicemembers Civil Relief Act, in part to provide relief from residential leases that conflict with military orders.

The SCRA specifies that military members may terminate residential leases upon receiving PCS or deployment orders, as long as the deployment period is not less than 90 days. To do so, the tenant must provide written notice to the landlord and the termination is effective 30 days after the next rent payment would be due.

Care is required in calculating the termination date, because it is not simply by adding 30 days from the date of notice. For example, if rent is due on the first of each month, and the tenant notifies his landlord on the Jan. 15, the lease termination is effective March 2.

Another important aspect of this protection provided by the SCRA is that if both spouses are lease signatories, the spouse’s obligation is terminated along with the servicemember’s. 

Notably, Virginia has enacted laws further protecting servicemembers, which are not available in most states. Whereas most states do not recognize the receipt of government housing as sufficient to terminate a lease without fault, Virginia law permits servicemembers to terminate leases upon receipt of orders to government housing.

Subject only to some very reasonable limitations, under Virginia law, servicemembers renting off post may terminate their leases when on-post quarters become available.  Once the landlord is properly notified in writing, the same timeline applies as under the SCRA: the lease is effectively terminated 30 days after the next rent payment would be due. The only real restriction is that the lease may not be terminated earlier than 60 days before that departure date that is reasonably required to comply with the orders.

Further, Virginia law specifies that a landlord may not charge liquidated damages for the terminating a lease under this law. An example of this prohibited conduct includes retaining the security deposit without cause merely because the lease was terminated early.

Finally, the servicemember must provide the landlord with the official orders, or, if the orders are not available, a memorandum from the commanding officer before the lease termination date.