How does a Kentucky landlord lawfully end a tenancy, and when may a tenant leave early?

Whether the Uniform Residential Landlord and Tenant Act applies to a Kentucky tenancy depends on the local government, not on the property or the tenant. Two adopting jurisdictions are confirmed from their own codes: Louisville and Jefferson County Metro Government, whose landlord and tenant chapter is the uniform act reproduced word for word, and the Lexington-Fayette Urban County Government, whose code enacts the act by reference. Other Kentucky cities are widely reported to have adopted it, but no state body publishes a list of adopters and those reports could not be confirmed from the cities' own codes, so this page does not repeat them. Where the act is in force it carries the notice periods, the anti-waiver rule, the landlord's duty to re-let, the holdover damages and the delivery rules. Where it is not, the general chapter governs and a tenant has no statutory notice right at all. The uniform act also does not reach seven kinds of occupancy even inside an adopting jurisdiction: residence in an institution incidental to a service, occupancy by a buyer under a contract of sale, fraternal or social organization housing, transient occupancy in a hotel, motel or similar lodging, occupancy conditioned on employment, a condominium owner or a cooperative proprietary lessee, and a dwelling on land devoted to livestock, poultry, tobacco, other crops or timber. The protective-order termination right applies statewide but only to leases created or renewed on or after June 29, 2017.

The switch is the ordinance of the city, county or urban-county government where the property sits. A reader checks that jurisdiction's own code of ordinances for a chapter or section adopting the Uniform Residential Landlord and Tenant Act; there is no statewide register to consult, and a local government may not adopt part of the act or write its own version, so the answer is a clean yes or no. Renters in Louisville and Lexington are inside the act. A second, date-based switch applies to the protective-order termination right, which reaches only leases created or renewed on or after June 29, 2017.

The switch changes: every answer on this page.

Landlord: 30 days (given before the next rent-due date). Tenant: two statutory routes state different tenant periods.

Three different anchors sit behind the figures, and which one applies turns on the tenancy and on the body of law. Inside a jurisdiction that has adopted the uniform act, a month-to-month notice is counted back from the periodic rental date named in the notice, so the tenancy ends on a rent date and the 30 days must land before it; a week-to-week notice and a notice ending the periodic tenancy that began when a written lease expired are both counted back from a termination date the noticing party is free to choose, so those tenancies may end on any day as long as the seven or ten days have run. Outside an adopting jurisdiction the landlord's period is one calendar month rather than 30 days, which means a notice given on the 10th runs to the 10th of the next month regardless of how many days that month holds.

Whether the termination date must fall on a rental-period boundary or a rent-due date differs between tenancy types or is not settled by the statute; the rule for each is stated above.

Tiers: Inside a jurisdiction that has adopted the uniform act there are three periods by tenancy type: 30 days for a month-to-month tenancy, counted back from the periodic rental date; seven days for a week-to-week tenancy; and ten days for the periodic tenancy that begins when a written lease ends, with the landlord free to terminate at any time without notice if the tenant is more than ten days late with the rent. The week-to-week track is narrower than it looks, because a tenancy is week-to-week by default only for a roomer paying weekly rent, and a roomer is defined by three conditions that must all hold: the unit lacks at least one major bathroom or kitchen facility such as a toilet, refrigerator or stove; a facility of that kind is supplied for common use by the occupants of that unit and of one or more others; and the landlord lives in the building. Everything else is month-to-month by default. Outside an adopting jurisdiction there are no tiers at all: the landlord gives one calendar month's written notice to end a tenancy at will or by sufferance, and nothing else in the general chapter states a period.

A lease may not change the period. Inside a jurisdiction that has adopted the uniform act a rental agreement may not provide that the tenant agrees to waive or forgo rights or remedies under sections 383.505 to 383.715, and a provision that does is unenforceable. The notice section sits inside that range, so the periods cannot be shortened or contracted away in an adopting jurisdiction. The bar protects the tenant, so a longer agreed period is not caught by it. Outside an adopting jurisdiction the general chapter contains no anti-waiver clause of any kind, and nothing in it says whether the parties may agree to a different period for the landlord's one calendar month.

Source of the period: two statutory routes with different periods coexist for residential tenancies.

Kentucky's answer depends on whether the local government has adopted the uniform act. Where it has, either side may end the tenancy by written notice naming a date: 30 days before the periodic rental date for a month-to-month tenancy, seven days before the termination date for a week-to-week tenancy, and ten days before the termination date for the periodic tenancy that begins when a written lease ends. Every one of those three subsections says the landlord or the tenant may terminate, so the tenant has the same periods as the landlord, though this is bilateral drafting rather than a rule requiring the two sides to be equal. The ten-day track carries a landlord-side exception: where the tenant fails to pay rent within ten days after it falls due, the landlord may terminate at any time without notice. Where no local government has adopted the act, the general chapter gives the landlord one month's written notice to end a tenancy at will or by sufferance and says nothing about the tenant at all. That silence is the reason the tenant's figure on this page carries no single number: a tenant in Louisville or Lexington has a statutory 30 days, and a tenant elsewhere in Kentucky has no statutory notice right the general chapter names. A tenancy is month-to-month by default unless the tenant is a roomer paying weekly rent, in which case it is week-to-week.

No: no statewide rule requires a reason, and no statute expressly authorizes local ordinances.

Local just-cause or eviction-control ordinances: expressly preempted by statute. Kentucky preempts local landlord-tenant rule-making twice over. The section that authorizes adoption of the uniform act says that if the act is adopted it must be adopted in its entirety and without amendment, and that no other ordinance may be enacted by a city, county or urban-county government relating to the subjects the act covers. Since March 2024 a second section bars a city, county, charter county, urban-county, consolidated local or unified local government from adopting or enforcing any landlord-tenant ordinance that conflicts with state law. A municipal requirement that a landlord show cause fails both tests at once: it is not the uniform act taken whole and unamended, and ending a tenancy is one of the subjects the act covers. On the separate question of local limits on rent, Kentucky reserves rent control on private property to the General Assembly, and the rent-increase page carries that.

No reason is required to end a tenancy or to decline to renew one anywhere in Kentucky, on either body of law. There is no statewide good-cause statute, no statutory list of no-fault grounds, no relocation payment and no route by which a city could impose a ground requirement of its own. One 2025 section produces a similar effect for one class of property without being a termination rule: in a county with a consolidated local government, an owner may not lease a single-family home, a multifamily unit or an accessory dwelling unit on a lot containing a single-family home in a zone that as of January 1, 2025 did not permit multifamily homes, unless the owner lives there, and the bar applies to new leases begun after June 27, 2025. It restricts letting rather than ending a tenancy, but it makes a class of Louisville tenancies impossible to renew.

The term ends on its date; no statute requires notice from either side.

After the term, a statute supplies what a holdover becomes. Both bodies of law convert a holdover by operation of law, but on opposite triggers. Where the uniform act is in force, the conversion runs on the landlord's consent: if the landlord consents to the tenant staying on, the default tenancy rule applies and the tenancy becomes month-to-month, or week-to-week for a roomer paying weekly rent. Where the act is not in force, the conversion runs on the landlord's failure to act in time. On a term of a year or more the landlord has 90 days from the expiry day to bring possession proceedings without demand or notice; miss that window and no proceeding is allowed until a year has passed from the day the term expired, and at the end of that year the tenant either leaves without demand or notice or stands in the same relation to the landlord as before, and so on from year to year. On a term shorter than a year the same ladder runs on 30 days and then 60 days.

A Kentucky fixed term ends on its day and the tenant must leave then; neither body of law requires a notice of non-renewal from either side, and Kentucky has no statute requiring a reminder before an automatic-renewal clause takes effect. What differs is what happens if the tenant stays. Where the uniform act is in force, a holdover the landlord consents to becomes a month-to-month tenancy. Where it is not, the general chapter gives the landlord a strict window to sue and penalizes missing it by reviving the tenancy for a further year on a year-or-longer term, or for 60 days on a shorter one. Both sections are in force at once inside an adopting jurisdiction, and they are not obviously reconciled: one gives the landlord a damages remedy for a holdover, the other controls how long the landlord has to bring the possession action at all. No Kentucky appellate decision has reconciled them, and this page does not guess at the answer.

Neither body of law calls a Kentucky holdover a tenant at sufferance for damages purposes, though the general chapter uses that label as a category for the landlord's one month's notice. Where the uniform act is in force, a tenant who stays without the landlord's consent gives the landlord an action for possession, and consent instead turns the tenancy into a periodic one. Where the act is not in force, the landlord may recover possession without demand or notice if proceedings are begun inside the statutory window, and the tenancy revives if the landlord does not. The court process itself is on the eviction page.

Damages: An enhanced measure that attaches only to a wilful or bad-faith holdover. Qualifiers: the multiple is a maximum, not the award; the award is the greater of two measures; and attorney fees added by statute.

Where the uniform act is in force, a tenant who stays without the landlord's consent after the term ends or the tenancy is terminated faces an action for possession, and, only if the holding over is wilful and not in good faith, an award of not more than three months' periodic rent or threefold the actual damages the landlord suffered, whichever is greater, plus reasonable attorney's fees. Three things about that measure matter. It is a ceiling the court may award up to, not a fixed sum. It is a greater-of formula, so the three-months figure is a floor within the ceiling only where actual damages are smaller. And it does not attach at all to a good-faith holdover. The same measure is available against anyone wrongfully in possession, whether or not that person was ever a tenant. Where the uniform act is not in force there is no money measure of any kind: the general chapter attaches no penalty to holding over, and the landlord's remedy is possession together with whatever rent is owed. Kentucky's 2025 law allowing police to remove unlawful occupants is closed to holdovers by its own terms, which say it does not apply to and may not be enforced against a current or former tenant.

What a consented holdover becomes: Outside an adopting jurisdiction a holdover the landlord does not sue over in time does not become a month-to-month tenancy: it becomes a fresh tenancy of the same length. On a term of a year or more the tenant stands in the same relation to the landlord as at the expiry, for a further year, and so on from year to year until the tenant leaves, is put out or makes a new contract. On a term shorter than a year the revived period is 60 days.

Yes: a statute imposes the duty.

When it attaches: Inside a jurisdiction that has adopted the uniform act the duty is chapter-wide and runs to whichever side is the aggrieved party, so it attaches whenever a party claims damages under the act and does not wait for an abandonment. The abandonment section is the specific machinery rather than the source of the duty: it says what the landlord must do once the tenant has gone. Outside an adopting jurisdiction no duty attaches on an abandonment at all, though Kentucky's highest court has drawn one line the other way, holding that a landlord who forfeits the lease and re-enters because the tenant broke a covenant is generally obliged to minimize damages.

Burden of proof: no authority allocates it.

The standard: Where the act is in force the standard has two layers. The chapter-wide rule is simply that the aggrieved party has a duty to mitigate damages, stated without elaboration in the section on how the act's remedies are to be administered. The abandonment section then says the landlord shall make reasonable efforts to rent the unit at a fair rental, and attaches consequences: if the landlord re-lets for a term beginning before the old agreement would have ended, the old agreement ends on the day the new tenancy begins; and if the landlord fails to use reasonable efforts, or accepts the abandonment as a surrender, the agreement is deemed to have been terminated by the landlord as of the date the landlord had notice of the abandonment. On a month-to-month or week-to-week tenancy the remaining term is treated as a month or a week for this purpose, which caps the departing tenant's exposure. Neither section says who must prove that reasonable efforts were or were not made, and no Kentucky decision allocates it.

No authority addresses a clause accelerating the remaining rent.

The lease may not waive the duty.

This is the sharpest split inside Kentucky, and a tenant's answer turns entirely on the local government. In a jurisdiction that has adopted the uniform act the duty is statutory and cannot be waived by the lease: the aggrieved party has a duty to mitigate damages, and on an abandonment the landlord shall make reasonable efforts to rent the unit at a fair rental, with the tenancy deemed terminated as of the landlord's notice of the abandonment if the landlord does not try or accepts the abandonment as a surrender. Outside such a jurisdiction the common law governs and it is the opposite rule. The Court of Appeals of Kentucky, then the state's highest court, held in 1924 in a case about a Louisville flat that no legal duty fell on the landlord to supply a tenant for premises the tenant had vacated, and the court confirmed in 1952 that it had consistently so held. A later 1952 decision drew the one distinction that survives: where the landlord forfeits the lease and re-enters because of the tenant's breach of a covenant the landlord is generally obliged to minimize damages, but following an abandonment by the tenant the landlord is under no obligation to attempt to re-let, on the reasoning that the tenant cannot impose a duty on the landlord by his own wrong. The same 1952 decision held that the doctrine of anticipatory breach does not accelerate rent installments whose due dates the lease has fixed; no Kentucky statute addresses an express acceleration clause on either body of law.

No statute addresses a fee a landlord may charge for ending a lease early; the general damages rules govern.

No Kentucky statute caps, authorizes or bars a fee for ending a residential lease early, on either body of law, and there is no statutory cap on the damages a landlord may recover from a tenant who leaves early. Three targeted rules do exist. A tenant who ends a lease under the protective-order section pays rent prorated to the effective date and nothing else: no negative credit entry, no negative character reference, no other rent or fees due solely to the early termination, and no damages or penalties at all where the termination comes 14 or more days before occupancy. In a jurisdiction that has adopted the uniform act, a lease may not make the tenant waive rights under the act, confess judgment, agree to pay the landlord's attorney's fees, or hold the landlord harmless from liability, and such a provision is unenforceable; note that this list does not reach liquidated damages as such. And everywhere in Kentucky a lease clause that lets the landlord terminate or penalize a tenant for calling police or emergency assistance is unenforceable, with actual damages, fees, costs and punitive damages of up to two months' periodic rent available to the tenant, for leases created or renewed on or after June 29, 2017. The state's administrative regulations were read and none of the 136 regulation titles governs landlord-tenant matters at all.

Early-exit rights by ground: domestic violence and related grounds, a statutory right to end the lease; military service beyond the federal act, state orders or National Guard duty are covered; death of the tenant, no statute; and other statutory grounds.

Domestic violence and related grounds: a victim may end the lease on notice.

Who qualifies: A protected tenant: a tenant of residential rental or leased housing, an applicant for tenancy, or a tenant with a minor household member, who is protected by a valid final order. Two order types qualify, a domestic violence order or an interpersonal protective order, and between them they reach domestic violence and abuse, dating violence and abuse, sexual assault and stalking; sexual assault takes in rape, sodomy and sexual abuse in any degree, an attempt, conspiracy, facilitation or solicitation, and incest. Human trafficking is not a ground under either order statute and so is not covered here. A person who is both the protected tenant and the individual the order names is not eligible. The right reaches only leases or rental agreements created or renewed on or after June 29, 2017.

Separate schemes: The section runs two tracks depending on when the order was obtained. Where the order comes after the lease was signed, the tenant gives written notice with a copy of the order and that is the whole test. Where the order predates the lease, the tenant must do that and also demonstrate to the landlord a safety concern that arises after the lease was signed; the statute sets no standard for what that showing must contain, so a tenant on the second track faces a requirement with no defined content.

Documentation: A copy of the valid protective order, attached to the tenant's written notice. The list is closed and it is short: only a final domestic violence order or a final interpersonal protective order will do. An emergency protective order, a temporary interpersonal protective order and a no-contact order made as a condition of pretrial release are all admitted by the section for other purposes, namely the bar on landlord retaliation and the lock-change right, but none of them supports a termination. There is no route through a police report, an advocate's statement or the tenant's own certification. The notice and the documentation go to the landlord together.

Window: Kentucky states no window at all. Nothing turns on how recently the incident happened or how recently the order was signed; the gate is simply that the order is valid and final when the tenant gives notice. A tenant relying on an order that has since expired has nothing to hand the landlord, and a tenant with a years-old order still in force has everything the section asks for.

Notice: 30 days; at least that many days must pass between the notice and leaving. The tenant gives the landlord written notice, with a copy of the order, stating the date the termination takes effect, and that date must be at least 30 days after the landlord receives the notice. The 30 days are a minimum the tenant may exceed, and they run from the landlord's receipt rather than from posting, so a tenant who mails the notice carries the transit time.

Rent owed: The tenant owes rent prorated to the effective date of the termination, payable at the time the lease would have required it. Nothing beyond that date is owed.

Cost to the tenant: The termination costs the tenant nothing beyond the prorated rent. The statute bars a negative credit entry, bars a negative character reference and bars liability for any other rent or fees due solely to the early termination, and where the termination happens 14 or more days before occupancy begins the tenant is not subject to any damages or penalties at all. A tenant who changes the locks pays for that.

Other tenants on the lease: the lease continues for the other tenants. Where the protected tenant leaves, or the person the order names is excluded, and other tenants are still living in the unit, the tenancy continues for those tenants. The person the order names stays liable for rent even after being excluded, and where that person is a co-tenant the landlord may refuse to let him in without a court order and may terminate and evict him whether or not a lease exists between them.

Locks: The statute lets the tenant change the locks. The lock right is self-help rather than a demand on the landlord. After telling the landlord of an intention to install a new lock, the protected tenant may install one at the tenant's own expense, by rekeying the existing lock or replacing it with one of equal or better quality, and must give the landlord a key to the new lock on request. The landlord may refuse to give a key to the person the order names, even where that person is a party to the lease. Unlike the termination right, the lock right is also available on an emergency protective order, a temporary interpersonal protective order or a pretrial-release no-contact order.

Later screening: more than one form of protection. Kentucky protects a victim in two different ways and neither is a general screening rule. The first bars the landlord from making a negative credit entry or giving a negative character reference, and from holding the tenant liable for other rent or fees, where any of that arises solely from the early termination. The second is a broader bar on adverse action: a landlord may not terminate a tenancy, fail to renew, refuse to rent or otherwise retaliate against a tenant or applicant because of the tenant's status as a protected tenant. What Kentucky does not have is a bar on a landlord or screening company characterizing the tenancy or the victim status in a tenant screening report as such.

The landlord's side: The landlord may require a copy of the order with the notice, and where the order predates the lease may require the tenant to show a safety concern that arose after the lease was signed. Against the person the order names, the landlord's position is unusually strong: that person is deemed to have interfered with the terminated lease and is civilly liable for all the landlord's economic losses from the early termination, including unpaid rent, early lease termination fees, commissions and advertising costs of re-letting, the cost of repairing damage, and any rent reduction previously given to the protected tenant. Where he is a co-tenant the landlord may bar him from the unit without a court order and may terminate and evict him whether or not a lease exists. A landlord acting in good faith under the section is immune from civil liability. On the other side, the landlord may not retaliate for protected-tenant status, and a tenant has a statutory defense to a possession action where the notice to leave is substantially based on acts that violated the tenant's order or led to it being issued, including an action founded on complaints of noise, disturbances or the repeated presence of police officers.

A protected tenant may end a residential lease early anywhere in Kentucky, whether or not the local government has adopted the uniform act. The tenant is a tenant, an applicant or a tenant with a minor household member who holds a valid final domestic violence order or interpersonal protective order, which between them cover domestic and dating violence, sexual assault and stalking but not human trafficking. The tenant gives the landlord written notice with a copy of the order, naming an effective date at least 30 days after the landlord receives it; where the order predates the lease the tenant must also show a safety concern that arose after the lease was signed. Rent is prorated to that date and nothing else is owed, with no negative credit entry, no negative character reference and no penalty at all if the termination comes 14 or more days before occupancy. Other tenants in the unit stay on their tenancy. The tenant may change the locks at the tenant's own expense after telling the landlord, and the landlord may keep a key from the person the order names. The right reaches only leases created or renewed on or after June 29, 2017, and no emergency or temporary order will support a termination.

Military service: State orders or National Guard duty are covered.

When the state rights attach: The state right attaches only to a member of the Kentucky National Guard, and only where the active-duty orders run 30 days or more. It works by extending the federal act rather than by writing lease mechanics of its own, so the federal notice rules and effective dates apply unchanged. A spouse or dependent gains nothing independently, because the section reaches a member of the Guard alone.

Any right, benefit or protection that would accrue to a member of the Kentucky National Guard under the federal Servicemembers Civil Relief Act on a call to federal active duty is extended to a member of the Guard called to Title 32 active duty, or to state active duty by the Governor, where the orders are for 30 days or more. Because that sentence takes in the whole federal act, the federal residential lease-termination right travels with it, and a Guard member on Governor-ordered state duty of 30 days or more may end a lease on the federal terms. Kentucky adds no shorter threshold, no independent right for a spouse or dependents and no notice mechanics of its own, and the landlord-tenant chapter says nothing about the military on either body of law.

Death of the tenant: No statute gives a right to end the lease on the tenant's death.

Other grounds: Two further grounds exist in a jurisdiction that has adopted the uniform act, and one thinner rule everywhere else. Where the unit or premises are damaged or destroyed by fire or casualty, or so injured by the elements, an act of God or another cause that enjoyment of the unit is substantially impaired, either the tenant or the landlord may end the rental agreement on 14 days' notice, and the tenant may vacate immediately without waiting. On such a termination the landlord returns all the unused portion of the prepaid rent, and the accounting is done as of the date of the casualty rather than the date the tenant left. Second, where the landlord unlawfully removes or excludes the tenant, or wilfully cuts off heat, running water, hot water, electricity, gas or another essential service, the tenant may either recover possession or end the rental agreement, and in either case recover up to three months' periodic rent and a reasonable attorney's fee, with prepaid rent returned on a termination. Outside an adopting jurisdiction there is no casualty termination right at all: the general chapter says only that a tenant is not liable for the rest of the term's rent on a building destroyed during the term by fire or other casualty without the tenant's fault or neglect, and it lets the lease displace even that. Everywhere in Kentucky a lease clause allowing the landlord to terminate or penalize a tenant for calling police or emergency assistance is unenforceable. Ending a lease over conditions the landlord will not repair, and protection against retaliation, are on the habitability page.

Abandonment starts the landlord's re-letting duty rather than a presumption.

Kentucky has no presumption that turns an absence into an ended tenancy, and the word abandons is nowhere defined in the chapter. Where the uniform act is in force, the seven-day rule a reader may have heard of is not a termination rule: it lets the landlord enter the unit at reasonable times during an absence of more than seven days, and lets the landlord recover actual damages where the lease required notice of an extended absence and the tenant wilfully did not give it. What actually ends the tenancy on an abandonment is one of two things. If the landlord re-lets for a term beginning before the old agreement would have ended, the old agreement ends on the day the new tenancy begins. If the landlord fails to make reasonable efforts to rent the unit at a fair rental, or accepts the abandonment as a surrender, the agreement is deemed to have been terminated by the landlord as of the date the landlord had notice of the abandonment, which is a date in the past. On a month-to-month or week-to-week tenancy the remaining term is treated as a month or a week. Abandonment matters in one other way: a landlord may not take possession by action or otherwise except on abandonment, on surrender, or as the act allows, so an undefined word carries a self-help gateway. A landlord who accepts rent knowing of a default waives the right to terminate for that breach unless the parties agree otherwise after the breach. Outside an adopting jurisdiction there is no abandonment statute at all, and the common-law consequence is that the landlord may leave the unit empty and sue for the term. What may be done with property left behind is covered separately.

Where the uniform act is in force, a party gives notice by taking steps reasonably calculated to inform the other, whether or not the other actually comes to know of it, and the statute then fixes when notice is received. A tenant receives notice when it comes to the tenant's attention, when it is delivered into the tenant's hand, or when it is mailed by registered or certified mail to the place the tenant has held out for receiving communications or, where the tenant has designated none, to the tenant's last known place of residence. A landlord receives notice when it comes to the landlord's attention, when it is delivered in writing at the place of business through which the rental agreement was made or at any place the landlord holds out for receiving communications, or when it is mailed by certified mail to either. Outside an adopting jurisdiction the only rule is that the landlord's one month's notice be in writing; the general chapter prescribes no method at all. Neither body of law asks for service by a sheriff or constable for a termination notice; officer service belongs to the court warrant in a possession case, which is on the eviction page.

Electronic delivery: the termination statute is silent on it.

What the notice must contain: The notice must be written and it must name a date: the termination date for a week-to-week tenancy or for a tenancy that began when a written lease ended, and the periodic rental date for a month-to-month tenancy. Beyond that neither body of law prescribes a form, a statement of grounds, an advisory or a notice of the right to contest. Outside an adopting jurisdiction the only stated content is that the notice require the tenant to leave.

Alternate address: Inside a jurisdiction that has adopted the uniform act a tenant may hold out a place for receiving communications, and a notice mailed there by registered or certified mail is received when it arrives; only where the tenant has designated no such place does the landlord fall back on the tenant's last known residence. The landlord has the same facility on the other side. Because the statute fixes the moment of receipt rather than the moment of sending, and the notice periods count back from a date, a landlord who posts a notice carries the risk of how long the post takes.

The Kentucky landlord-tenant chapter cites federal law in one place only, and it is not about termination: the assistance-animal section refers to the federal fair-housing, disability and rehabilitation statutes. Federal law reaches a Kentucky termination in two other ways instead. The federal servicemember act is expressly extended by the National Guard chapter to a Guard member on Title 32 duty or on state active duty ordered by the Governor for 30 days or more. And the federal 30-day notice for covered dwellings applies of its own force, with no Kentucky decision construing it either way.

The federal CARES Act 30-day notice to vacate for covered properties, as read in this state's courts: no state appellate decision construes it. No Kentucky decision construes the CARES Act's 30-day notice for covered dwellings. Kentucky has not written the provision into its own law either. A landlord of a covered dwelling therefore follows the federal provision as written, and there is no Kentucky standing order or published court practice that tells them how it is applied. (Appellate picture read as of September 3, 2026.)

Abraham v. Gheens, 205 Ky. 289, 265 S.W. 778, 40 A.L.R. 186 (Court of Appeals of Kentucky, 1924; residential lease; bears on the duty to re-let): A tenant who took a one-year lease of a first-floor flat in a Louisville flat building and then vacated argued that the landlord should have used diligence to find another tenant. The court disagreed: the tenant's failure to occupy the unit did not impose on the landlord a duty to procure someone else to occupy it, and no legal duty fell on the landlord to supply a tenant for the premises the tenant had vacated. This is the residential authority for the rule that applies outside the jurisdictions that have adopted the uniform act.

Dulworth v. Hyman, 246 S.W.2d 993 (Court of Appeals of Kentucky, 1952; arose from a commercial lease; bears on the duty to re-let): In a case about a commercial storeroom in Louisville, the court confirmed that although a party to a breached contract ordinarily has a duty to minimize damages, leases are an exception, and that Kentucky had consistently held that a landlord is not bound, on the tenant's vacating during the term, to secure another tenant to minimize damages. Because the lease was commercial the decision does not itself supply the residential rule, but it confirms the earlier residential holding was still good law.

Jordon v. Nickell, 253 S.W.2d 237 (Court of Appeals of Kentucky, 1952; a general statement of law; bears on the duty to re-let): The court drew the line that still governs Kentucky outside the jurisdictions that have adopted the uniform act. Where the landlord forfeits the lease and re-enters because the tenant broke a covenant, the landlord is generally obliged to minimize damages and the tenant gets credit for what a new letting brings in; but following an abandonment by the tenant the landlord is under no obligation to attempt to re-let, because the tenant cannot impose a duty on the landlord by his own wrong. The court also held that the doctrine of anticipatory breach does not accelerate rent installments whose due dates the lease has fixed. The building was in mixed use, with business premises and apartments above.