Where a Tenant Can Lawfully Leave Early: The 50-State Map of Statutory Early-Termination Rights (2026)

No Alabama statute lets a victim of domestic violence, sexual assault, stalking or human trafficking end a residential lease early. The words domestic violence, sexual assault, stalking and trafficking appear nowhere in either landlord-tenant chapter, and none of the sections in the Code of Alabama that use them touches a tenancy. The Protection from Abuse Act gives a court power to grant the plaintiff possession of the residence to the exclusion of the defendant, by evicting the defendant or restoring possession, where the defendant owes a duty of support and is the sole owner or lessee, and to bar the defendant from disposing of property the parties own or lease together. That moves the abuser; it does not release the victim from the lease. There is no lock-change right, no confidentiality duty, no protection against a later screening decision, and no rule about what happens to other tenants on the agreement. A victim who leaves early is in the same position as any other tenant who leaves early, subject to the landlord's duty to mitigate and its other-vacant-units limit.

Alabama lease termination page · verified September 3, 2026

Alaska gives a victim of domestic violence, sexual assault or stalking no statutory right to end a lease early, and it is one of a small number of states that still does not. The words do not appear anywhere in the landlord-tenant chapter, and the domestic-violence, protective-order and crime-victim titles create no housing right either: what they give a survivor is relief against the abuser, not against the landlord, and the state's address-confidentiality program binds state agencies rather than landlords. There is no lock-change right, no protection against the termination being held against the tenant when applying for the next home, and no duty on a landlord to keep what a tenant discloses confidential. A tenant in this position is left with the ordinary routes: the 30-day month-to-month notice, the 14-day week-to-week notice while rent is current, or a negotiated release. A court order excluding an abuser from the home is available and is the practical remedy Alaska law does provide.

Alaska lease termination page · verified September 3, 2026

No Arkansas statute lets a victim of domestic violence, sexual assault, stalking or human trafficking end a residential lease early. The state's one tenancy provision on the subject, section 18-16-112, protects a victim in other ways and arms the landlord against the abuser, but it gives no right to quit. A landlord may not end, refuse to renew or refuse to grant a tenancy, or otherwise retaliate, because of the abuse; the locks may be changed at the tenant's expense with the landlord's prior consent; the landlord may bar an abuser subject to a stay-away order from the victim's home, may pursue every remedy against the abuser including ending the abuser's tenancy and evicting the abuser whether or not the abuser holds a rental agreement, is entitled to a court order doing so on proof that the person is an abuser, and has civil immunity for acting in good faith; and a tenant may not give up the right to ask for law enforcement or other emergency help. The protections attach to a person named in an incident of domestic abuse documented in a court order within the previous 60 days, or within 60 days of a tenancy ending because of the abuse. That second window is part of the definition of who is protected and is not itself a right to end a lease, though it is the sentence most often mistaken for one. Domestic abuse has two definitions and they are not the same shape. One is the infliction of physical injury, or a reasonable fear of it, upon a household member by a member or former member of the household, so ordinary violence by a stranger falls outside the section. The other is the commission of a sex crime or an act of stalking upon a household member, and that one does not require the offender to be in the household. Sex crime is a closed list of twenty-three offenses, ending with capital rape, and it reaches an attempt, solicitation or conspiracy to commit any of them, together with equivalent offenses under another state's, federal, tribal or military law. Stalking is defined in the section itself as following or loitering near a person with the purpose of annoying, harassing, or committing an assault or battery. Human trafficking is not mentioned anywhere in Arkansas landlord-tenant law. A tenant who leaves early because of abuse is liable under the lease like any other departing tenant, subject to the landlord's duty to use reasonable efforts to minimize the damages.

Related protection: A landlord may not terminate or fail to renew a residential tenancy, refuse to enter into one, or otherwise retaliate in the leasing of a residence because a tenant, an applicant, or a member of the tenant's or applicant's household is a victim of domestic abuse (section 18-16-112, subsection (b)(1)). The bar reaches applicants and household members, not only a tenant already in place. Nothing in Arkansas law bars a landlord or a screening company from describing a past departure in a tenant report.

Lock changes: The landlord, or a tenant who is not the abuser, may change the locks at the tenant's expense and with the landlord's prior consent, and whichever of them changes the locks must give the other a copy of the new key immediately, or as soon as possible if one of them is away (section 18-16-112, subsection (b)(2)). Arkansas is the reverse of the states that let a victim require a lock change: here the landlord's consent comes first and the tenant pays.

Arkansas lease termination page · verified September 4, 2026

Florida gives a victim of domestic violence, dating violence, sexual violence, stalking or human trafficking no right to end a lease early. Part II of chapter 83 contains no such provision; the only place any of those words appears in the part is the background-screening list for apartment employees. The domestic-violence chapter, the assault and stalking chapter and the human-trafficking chapter contain no reference to a landlord, a tenancy, a rental agreement or a dwelling unit. The one housing power in the domestic-violence chapter belongs to the court issuing an injunction, which may award the petitioner temporary exclusive use and possession of a shared dwelling or exclude the respondent from the petitioner's residence; that allocates the home between the two people and creates nothing against the landlord and does not end the tenancy. Nothing bars a landlord from ending a tenancy because of victim status either. A tenant in this position is left with whatever the lease provides, an early-termination fee addendum if one was signed at the start, or the landlord's own choice of remedies, under which the landlord may lawfully stand by and hold the tenant to the rent.

2026 regular-session measures citing chapter 83 (23 bills, including SB 142, HB 107, SB 716 and HB 811): Twenty-three measures citing chapter 83 were filed in the 2026 regular session. Two of them, companion bills on the termination of a rental agreement by a victim of domestic violence, dating violence, sexual violence or stalking, would have created a new section giving such a tenant the right to end the lease, allocating rent liability between the tenant and the perpetrator, barring forfeiture of certain money paid, and prohibiting a landlord from terminating or evicting because the tenant or the tenant's minor child is a victim. Two others would have lengthened the three-day nonpayment notice to five days and barred fees during it. None of them became law, and the two measures from that group that did pass concern a fraudulent-entry ground for ending a tenancy for cause and a veterans housing pilot program, neither of which changes a value on this page. The regular session adjourned on March 13, 2026 with every one of these measures short of passage; each died in its committee of reference or was withdrawn before introduction, and Florida bills do not carry over. No special session has been called on these subjects, and Florida special sessions are limited to the subjects named in the call.

Florida lease termination page · verified September 2, 2026

Idaho gives a victim of domestic violence, sexual assault, stalking or human trafficking no right to end a lease early, no defense to a claim for rent, no release from rent, no lock-change right, no protection in later screening and no confidentiality duty. None of the three governing chapters uses the words domestic, stalking, sexual, trafficking, abuse or victim in any relevant sense; the only related word anywhere in them is violence, twice, inside the definitions of a forcible entry and a forcible detainer. What Idaho does give runs against the abuser and concerns possession rather than the lease: under the Domestic Violence Crime Prevention Act a court may exclude the respondent from the dwelling the parties share, and an officer may assist in placing the petitioner in possession of it, but nothing in that chapter mentions a lease, a rental agreement, a tenant or a landlord, and its uses of the word terminate are all about ending a protection order or a relationship. The stalking chapter is the same: it protects property owned, leased or occupied by the victim from contact and says nothing about ending a tenancy. No bill creating such a right was filed in the 2026 session.

Idaho lease termination page · verified September 3, 2026

No Iowa statute lets a victim of domestic abuse, sexual abuse, stalking, elder abuse or human trafficking end a residential lease early, and none gives victim status as a defense to a claim for rent. There is no lock-change right, no duty on the landlord to keep a victim's documents confidential, and no protection against a later landlord or screening service holding an early departure against an applicant. Two things Iowa does have are easily mistaken for the right and are not it. A protective order may require the abuser to give the person who applied for it possession of the home, to the exclusion of the abuser, or to provide suitable alternative housing; that binds the abuser, not the landlord, and does not release anyone from the rent. And a landlord may not prohibit or limit a tenant's right to summon law enforcement or other emergency assistance for a victim of abuse, a victim of a crime, or a person in an emergency, and may not impose a penalty for doing so, including an actual or threatened eviction, on pain of a civil penalty equal to one month's rent along with actual damages, fees, costs and an injunction. A tenant who leaves early for safety reasons is on the ordinary rules: the notice periods above, and the landlord's duty to re-rent at a fair rental, which limits what can be recovered.

Iowa lease termination page · verified September 3, 2026

Mississippi gives a victim of domestic violence, sexual assault, stalking or trafficking no right to end a residential lease early. Neither landlord-tenant chapter contains the words domestic, violence, stalking, sexual, assault, trafficking, victim or survivor; there is no notice route, no discharge of future rent, no waiver of a fee, no lock-change right against the landlord, no confidentiality duty and no protection in later screening. What Mississippi law does give runs against the abuser rather than the landlord. Under the Protection from Domestic Abuse Law a court may grant the petitioner possession of the residence to the exclusion of the respondent, by evicting the respondent or restoring possession to the petitioner or both; may limit the respondent's physical proximity to the residence and place of work; may bar either party from transferring, encumbering or disposing of property mutually owned or leased; and, in a final order, may make the respondent pay the abused person's losses including moving expenses. None of that touches the lease: the words landlord, tenant and rent do not appear in the relief section, and a survivor who leaves the dwelling remains a tenant on the lease and remains liable for the rent. Two bills that would have created a right to leave were filed, in 2022 and 2023; both died, the second after clearing committee and being amended on the floor, and none has been filed since.

2026 Regular Session landlord-tenant and protective-order measures: Five measures of the 2026 Regular Session touched this topic or the protective-order law: two on landlord-tenant duties and eviction timing, one on the jurisdictional limit for residential evictions in justice court, and two amending the Protection from Domestic Abuse Law, one of them to streamline emergency relief. None reached a floor vote and none would have created a right for a victim to end a lease. All five died in committee on February 3, 2026. The 2026 Regular Session adjourned on April 15, 2026 and Mississippi measures do not carry over, so each is dead.

Mississippi lease termination page · verified September 4, 2026

No Montana statute lets a victim of domestic violence, sexual assault, stalking or human trafficking end a residential lease early. There is no right to terminate, no defense to a claim for rent, no release from rent, no lock-change right, no confidentiality duty on the landlord, and no protection against the termination being held against the tenant later. A victim in Montana is on the ordinary rules: the 30 days on a month-to-month tenancy, or the one-month cap on damages for leaving a fixed term early. The one provision in the landlord-tenant chapter that touches the subject runs the other way. A notice of no contact between a landlord and a tenant is valid only where it rests on a court order, either a no-contact order in a partner or family member assault case or an order of protection; an out-of-court notice of no contact between them is invalid. A court no-contact order in an assault case is a criminal-law order that lasts 72 hours or until the defendant's first appearance unless continued, may impose a distance restriction, and says nothing about the lease, the rent, or the landlord's obligations.

Montana lease termination page · verified September 3, 2026

New Mexico gives a victim of domestic violence no statutory right to end a lease early. Nothing in the residential Act, the Family Violence Protection Act, or the crime-victim provisions of the criminal-procedure chapter lets a survivor terminate, and the words stalking, dating violence, human trafficking, domestic abuse, and safety plan appear nowhere in the property chapter. What the Act gives instead is a defense, and only inside an eviction the owner has already started. Where an owner terminates on three days' notice for a substantial violation, it is a defense that the resident is a victim of domestic violence; if the resident has filed for or secured a temporary domestic-violence restraining order arising from the incident behind the notice or from an earlier one, the writ of restitution may not issue at all. In every other case where domestic violence is raised as a defense, the court has discretion to evict the resident accused of the violation while allowing the tenancy of the remaining residents to continue undisturbed, so removal of the person responsible is a power the court holds inside the owner's own case, not something the survivor can require. That defense states no notice period, no documentation the resident may choose, and no release from rent. The Family Violence Protection Act lets a court grant a protected party sole possession of the residence or order the restrained party to provide temporary suitable housing, but that is an order against the abuser: it does not touch the lease, release the survivor from rent, or impose anything on the owner. There is no confidentiality duty and no protection against a landlord or a screening service characterizing the departure; the Act's only lock provision runs the opposite way, making it an unlawful act for the owner to plug, change, add, or remove a lock. Bills to create the right were introduced in 2019 and again in 2025 and both died in committee, and no bill was refiled in 2026.

New Mexico lease termination page · verified September 4, 2026

No Ohio statute lets a victim of domestic violence, sexual assault, stalking or human trafficking end a residential lease early, and none gives victim status as a defense to a claim for rent. The landlord-tenant chapter mentions domestic violence twice and both times to take shelters for victims out of the chapter altogether. There is no lock-change right, no duty to keep a victim's documents confidential, and no protection against a later landlord holding the termination against an applicant. What Ohio does have is a court remedy that works on the abuser rather than on the lease: a civil protection order may grant possession of the residence to the person who applied for it, to the exclusion of the respondent, by evicting the respondent where the residence is owned or leased by the applicant alone, or by ordering the respondent to leave where it is jointly owned or leased. That order removes the abuser from the home; it does not release the victim from the rent or shorten the ordinary notice a tenant must give to leave.

H.B. 855 (136th General Assembly), the Ohio Safe Homes Act: Would let a tenant end a rental agreement early where the tenant is the victim of a specified crime, with a lock-change right and a new protected act in the retaliation section, and would give a landlord who rented to such a tenant an income tax credit. If enacted it would replace the answer that no Ohio statute gives a victim of domestic violence a right to end the lease early. Introduced May 12, 2026 and referred to the House Judiciary Committee. As of September 5, 2026 the as-introduced text is the only version and no committee report is recorded; the 136th General Assembly sits through December 31, 2026, so the bill is alive.

Ohio lease termination page · verified September 3, 2026

Pennsylvania gives a survivor of domestic violence, sexual violence or stalking no statewide right to end a lease early. There is no notice route, no discharge of future rent, no fee waiver, no lock-change right against the landlord, no confidentiality duty and no protection in later screening. Three things do exist and none of them ends a lease. The Landlord and Tenant Act of 1951 gives a residential tenant who is a victim of domestic violence 30 days to appeal a judgment to the court of common pleas, where the ordinary period for possession is 10, and lets that tenant obtain a stay by paying each month's rent in cash into a court escrow within 10 days of its due date rather than by bonding the judgment; the act defines a victim of domestic violence for that purpose as a person who has obtained a protection-from-abuse order or can provide other suitable evidence as the court directs (section 513). Separately, a protection-from-abuse order may grant the plaintiff possession of the residence to the exclusion of the defendant, by evicting the defendant or restoring possession to the plaintiff, and where the defendant is the sole owner or lessee and owes a duty of support, may do the same or, with the plaintiff's consent, order the defendant to provide suitable alternative housing; neither touches the lease as against the landlord and neither releases anyone from rent. Federal law protects tenants in covered assisted housing but gives no general right to end a lease. Philadelphia and Pittsburgh have their own tenant ordinances, which sit outside this state page. A bill that would create a statewide right to be released from a lease has passed the House and is before a Senate committee.

HB 72 (2025-2026 Regular Session), Printer's No. 3296: Would add a new article to the Landlord and Tenant Act of 1951 giving an eligible tenant a right to be released from a lease after an act of domestic violence, sexual violence or stalking, or a crime as the Crime Victims Act defines it. The tenant would give signed written notice naming a release date, within 90 days of the later of the most recent qualifying act, the issuance of a listed document, or the responsible party's release from custody, with one of an enumerated list of documents, including a statement from an attesting third party such as a law-enforcement official, licensed health care professional, licensed social worker, victim advocate or human services provider. Giving the notice would not be a breach of the lease. If it becomes law, Pennsylvania's answer on early termination by a victim changes from nothing to a right to terminate, and about ten related answers on this page change with it. Passed the House of Representatives on third consideration and final passage on April 29, 2026 by 118 votes to 83, and referred to the Senate Urban Affairs and Housing Committee on May 1, 2026, where it has not yet been reported. Pennsylvania runs a continuous two-year session that does not end until November 30, 2026, so the measure is live.

Pennsylvania lease termination page · verified September 3, 2026

West Virginia gives a survivor of domestic violence, sexual assault, stalking or trafficking no right to end a residential lease early. There is no such provision in the landlord and tenant article, none in the security-deposit article, none in the domestic-relations chapter that carries the state's domestic-violence law, and none in the criminal chapter. What a survivor can get is different in kind: a court may include in a protective order a term granting the petitioner possession of the residence or household the parties jointly lived in when the abuse occurred, and may order the person restrained to stay away from it. That reallocates possession between the two of them. It does not end the lease, does not release the survivor from rent, does not oblige the landlord to re-let, and gives the survivor no notice right against the landlord. A survivor who leaves early is in the same position as any other tenant leaving early, which means the ordinary notice rules and the landlord's re-letting election described elsewhere on this page. The same three sections creating a survivor's termination right have been introduced in three consecutive sessions and have died in committee each time, so the gap is one the Legislature has been asked to close and has not.

West Virginia lease termination page · verified September 4, 2026