Somebody told you last night. They are leaving in six weeks and there are five months left on the lease.
You said it was fine, because it is fine, because they are your friend. Then you lay awake doing arithmetic.
If you have been searching this and landing on forum threads rather than real answers, there is a reason: the honest answer depends on a document only you can read, and most articles would rather give you a confident generalization than tell you that. So here is the structure of the problem instead, which is the part that is actually the same for everybody.
First: your private arrangement and the lease are two different things
This is the single most important idea here and it clears up most of the confusion.
You and your roommate can agree on absolutely anything between yourselves about who pays what. That agreement is real and it matters. What it does not automatically do is change the lease, or bind the landlord, or remove anybody’s name from anything.
Two separate questions, then:
- What do we owe each other? That is between the two of you, and you can settle it this week.
- Who is on the hook to the landlord? That is answered by your lease and by your state, and the only way to find out is to read the lease and, where it is unclear, ask somebody qualified.
People conflate these constantly, and it is why a conversation that felt completely settled in October produces an argument in March.
The clause most people have never read
Go and find your lease — the actual file, not your memory of signing it — and look at how it describes the tenants’ obligations. Specifically, whether each tenant is responsible for the whole rent or only for a share.
The wording differs between leases, and the consequences of the two versions are completely different. An enormous number of people discover which one they signed only at the moment somebody leaves.
This article is not going to tell you what your clause means, because it cannot see it. It is going to tell you to find it, copy the words out, and if it is not obvious, ask a tenant advice service or a legal aid office before you promise your roommate anything. That call is usually free and it takes about ten minutes.
While you are in there, note six other things: what the lease says about ending early, about subletting or assignment, about adding or removing a tenant, about notice, about how the deposit is returned, and whether there is a fee for a change of tenant.
The three ways this ends
Whatever your lease says, there are only three shapes to the outcome, and they cost very different amounts.
1. Replace them
Somebody new takes their place on the lease. Usually the cheapest outcome for everyone and usually the most administrative — the landlord will have a view, there may be an application and a fee, and your lease may have something specific to say about it.
2. Release them
The landlord agrees to take them off the lease and the remaining tenants carry it. The critical phrase is the landlord agrees: an agreement between roommates does not remove anybody from a lease they signed. If you go this route, getting it in writing from the landlord is the entire point of the exercise.
3. Carry it quietly
They move out, they keep paying their share privately, and the lease is untouched. Easiest this month, longest tail — their name is still on it, your arrangement is invisible to the landlord, and everything rests on a private arrangement continuing to be honored.
Decide which one you want before you contact the landlord. Deciding during the call means you get the landlord’s preference rather than yours.
The deposit is the fight. Settle it now.
If you take one practical thing from this article, take this one.
The deposit was almost certainly paid as one sum against one lease, and it usually comes back as one sum at the end of that lease — which may be many months after your roommate has gone, and it may come back reduced for reasons that have nothing to do with them.
So the departing person has money sitting in an account they do not control, exposed to risks they will not be present for, returned on a date nobody knows. That arrangement feels completely fine in week one. It feels very different in month seven, particularly if a deduction appears.
Settle it on the departure date, one of two ways:
- Buy them out. Whoever stays pays the leaver their share of the deposit now and keeps whatever comes back at the end. Clean and final, and the usual choice.
- Agree in writing that they wait — perfectly reasonable, but write down what happens if the deposit comes back short, and who decides whether a deduction was fair. That sentence is the whole value of the exercise.
And on the day they leave, photograph their room empty, in daylight, plus the shared spaces. That protects both of you: them from being blamed later for damage that happened after they left, and you from inheriting the cost of something that was already there.
Do the arithmetic from statements, not memory
Here is a worked example, because people routinely get this wrong by guessing.
Three of you, rent $1,800, so $600 each. One leaves halfway through a 30-day month. That month’s utilities come to $150 for the household, so $50 each.
- Their rent share for the full month: $600. They lived there 15 of 30 days, so half: $300
- Their utilities share: $50. Half: $25
- Total actually owed for the month: $325
- Already paid at the start of the month: $600
- So they are owed back: $275
The check is that the three shares still add up to the household total. If they do not, something has been counted twice or missed entirely. Pull the last few months of bank statements and go line by line — memory is reliably generous about one’s own contributions and vague about everybody else’s, in both directions, without anyone intending it.
Then write it down, and both sign it
One page. What their last day is, what the net position is, when it gets paid, how the deposit is handled, what they pay after they leave, when the bills in their name transfer — and the clause everybody omits: what happens if it goes wrong. What if a payment is late? What if the deposit comes back short? What if the person who stayed also moves out?
None of that is awkward to write down in advance. All of it is deeply awkward to settle afterward.
And if it feels distrustful to ask: frame it as being for both of you, which it genuinely is. “Let’s write this down so neither of us has to remember it in March” has never once started an argument. Being asked for money in March, with no record, frequently has.
If somebody will not confirm in writing what they just agreed to out loud, that is not an administrative hiccup. That is information, and it is much better to have it now.
When this stops being a paperwork problem
If money is already being withheld, if somebody is threatening legal action, or if an amount is at stake that you could not absorb, stop organizing and get advice — a tenant advice service, a legal aid office, or an attorney. And if there is any question of safety, harassment or abuse, there are specific protections and specific services for that, and your records are the least important part of what you need.
If you would rather not build the paperwork yourself, we made it. The Split Lease is a 24-page printable workbook with eight fill-in worksheets — the lease sheet, the reckoning, the deposit position, the three routes compared side by side, and the one-page agreement for both of you to sign. There’s a free five-page sample if you want to see the method first.
Handbook House guides are educational materials for organizing your own records. This article is not legal advice and does not tell you what your lease means or what your state requires — your lease and your local tenant advice service are the sources for that.