Tenant is Husband AND Wife: Don't Do It

By Richard Marmor
AZSA Legal and Legislative Committee Chair

Here’s good rule of thumb: Never have more than one individual named as tenant on a lease.

While it’s true that having more people named as tenants on a lease give you more people who are liable for the rent, ask yourself: when was the last time you sued a tenant for rent? So what good are those extra people?

Here are a few of the many good reasons why naming only one person as tenant is the best practice:

No more domestic disputes. We’ve all endured these. One spouse comes in directing that the other spouse be denied access. Of course if the other spouse is also a named tenant on the lease, denying that person access would potentially be a violation by you under the lease. Then there are the more bizarre cases, like the report I recently got from one operator: the wife came in, cut the husband’s lock off of the unit and replaced it with her own. Some time later the husband cut off the wife’s lock and installed another of his own. Yet later she came back, then him . . . you get the picture. (I only hope the facility’s door survived.)

If only one of them had been the tenant, for good or ill there could be no claim by the other angry spouse; (s)he is just another stranger to the lease. Your answer becomes simple: “I’m sorry, but you are not our tenant.” If the estranged spouse wants access to the unit, (s)he can ask a court for an order granting access, then you’re off the hook.

Know where you stand with military tenants. If someone in the military rents from you, unless that tenant signs a waiver of their rights under the Servicemembers’ Civil Relief Act (SCRA), you cannot foreclose your lien and auction their contents if they default.

On the other hand, if the wife of someone in the military rents a unit from you, you can foreclose your lien. The SCRA protection does not, in that case, extend to military dependents.

But, if they’re both on the lease and there’s a default, the SCRA would apply, and absent a waiver, you would be precluded from foreclosing. (Importantly, the spouse cannot provide a waiver; only the servicemember can.)

Limit your risks. The more people you have on the lease as tenant, the greater your chances of encountering a bankruptcy; the greater your odds of having a tenant die, with all of its who-has-rights-to-the-contents issues; the more people who might turn out to be in the military, thereby limiting your rights in the event of a default; and worse, the greater the number of people who are in a position to sue you if and when something goes wrong. There is no counterbalancing benefit for you to have more people on the lease, so why expose yourself to greater risk?

Limit your pre-sale notices. I used to have a facility near a university. We often got students who wanted to rent units together, splitting the rent to save money. If all of them went on the lease as tenants, in the event of a default I would have to send all the requisite notices to each one of them before we could auction. With only one named as tenant, that is the only person to whom notice is owed. (That’s not to say that you would not want to send some kind of notice to the others, but it would not have to be the more expensive official notices.)

How should you lease to a couple? Put one or the other on the lease as tenant, then list the remaining spouse as someone authorized to enter the unit. Besides, most leases today contain a provision declaring that anyone with both the gate-code and lock key are presumed to have the tenant’s authority to enter.

Life is so much simpler this way.

[This article deals with a law related subject at a general level and is not intended for you to rely on. You should consult a lawyer before making a final decision in a situation involving any legal issues.]

Richard Marmor, Esq. is a self-storage consultant, facility owner and former facility operator in the Phoenix area. He is also the founding President and current member of the Board of Directors of the Arizona Self-Storage Association, serving as Chair of the Legal and Legislative Committee.

Source: Behind Closed Doors, AZSA Newsletter Archives