Renting an Apartment With Roommates When two or more people sign the same rental agreement or lease, they are co-tenants and share the same legal rights and responsibilities. The problem with this situation is that one roommate's bad behavior affect them all. Cotenants may decide to split the rent equally or unequally between themselves. However, this agreements amongst roommates don't affect the landlord. Each cotenant is independently liable to the landlord for all of the rent. Landlords often remind cotenants of this obligation by inserting into the lease a that says that the tenants are "jointly and severally" liable for paying rent and adhering to terms of the agreement. A landlord can legally hold all cotenants responsible for the negative actions of just one, and terminate everyone's tenancy with the appropriate notice. For all sorts of reasons, roommate arrangements regularly go bad. Roommates make lots of informal agreements about splitting...
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