If you are active duty and your orders have moved you, federal law lets you end a residential lease early. Your landlord does not have to agree, your lease does not need a "military clause" in it, and no early-termination fee can be charged. The right sits in 50 U.S.C. 3955, section 305 of the Servicemembers Civil Relief Act.
The one number most pages get wrong. The SCRA does not give you a "30 day notice period". It sets an effective date, and the arithmetic is two steps, not one. Deliver notice on 10 March on a monthly lease and your tenancy ends on 1 May, not 30 March and not 30 April. The worked example is below, with every step shown so you can check it against the statute rather than trust us.
Do you qualify
Section 3955 does not cover every servicemember with a lease. It covers three situations, and each one carries conditions that decide whether your lease is in or out. Read them against your own dates, because the qualifying event has to come after you signed.
| Route | What has to have happened |
|---|---|
| You signed, then joined 3955(b)(1)(A) | The lease was signed by you, or for you, and you then entered military service. |
| You were serving, then got orders 3955(b)(1)(B) | You were already in service when you signed, and you then received orders for a permanent change of station, or to deploy with a unit or as an individual in support of a military operation, for 90 days or more. |
| Stop movement 3955(b)(1)(C) | Both things, not either: you signed on receipt of PCS or 90-day deployment orders, and a stop movement order issued for a local, national or global emergency then prevented you from occupying the place. |
Two more routes exist that are easy to miss because they are not about orders at all. If the lessee dies in service, a spouse or dependent may terminate within one year of the death under 3955(a)(3). If the lessee suffers a catastrophic injury or illness, 3955(a)(4) provides a route of its own. Neither of these lives in 3955(a)(2), which is a different rule entirely: it says that when a lessee validly terminates, a dependent who is also on the lease is released too.
Who is not covered by this section. If you have no qualifying event, the SCRA gives you nothing here, whatever a lease-break site tells you. That is a real situation with real options, and it has its own page: breaking a military lease without orders.
The date your lease actually ends
This is where most guidance goes wrong, including some written by people who had the statute open. The lease does not end when you hand over the notice. It ends on the date subsection (d) computes, and which rule applies is decided by the type of lease first and the payment schedule second. It is never decided by which route under (a) you used.
The rule, for a monthly-rent lease of premises
- Find the first rent payment that falls due after the day you deliver the notice. The instalment already due on or before that day is not the one.
- Add 30 days to it. That date is when the tenancy ends.
Worked example. Rent is $1,500, payable on the 1st. March rent was paid on 1 March. You deliver written notice and a copy of your orders on 10 March.
- The first rent due after 10 March is 1 April. March 1 does not count, it has already fallen due.
- 1 April plus 30 days is 1 May.
- So you owe March rent, April rent, and rent prorated to the effective date. You do not owe May, June or the rest of the term.
Notice what the two common wrong answers look like: "30 days from notice" gives 9 April, and counting from the wrong instalment gives 30 April. Both are a month or more out, and a month of rent is what the error costs.
Leases that are not monthly follow the second sentence of 3955(d)(1)(A) instead, and the stop-movement route in (b)(1)(C) has its own rule in 3955(d)(1)(B). If your lease is not a plain monthly one, read the subsection rather than the summary.
What your state adds on top
The SCRA is a floor, not a ceiling. Ten of the sixteen states we hold verified records for have a military lease-termination statute of their own, and several of them reach people the federal section does not: National Guard members on state orders, tenants leaving on honorable discharge, tenants ordered into government quarters.
| State | Its own statute | Notice the state asks for | Early-termination fee? |
|---|---|---|---|
| California | Cal. Mil. & Vet. Code § 409 | Federal mechanics, mirrored in state law | No |
| Florida | Fla. Stat. § 83.682 | 30 days or more, stated in the notice | No, and it cannot be waived |
| Georgia | O.C.G.A. § 44-7-22 | 30 days or more, stated in the notice | No |
| Illinois | 765 ILCS 705/16 | Set by 765 ILCS 705/16(c) | No state bar, federal bar applies |
| Massachusetts | M.G.L. c. 33, § 13A | Federal mechanics, incorporated whole | No, plus a state money remedy |
| New York | N.Y. Military Law § 310 | Effective date set by rent schedule | No, handled differently from federal |
| Oregon | ORS 90.475 | Written notice plus proof of orders | No, rent liability is capped |
| Pennsylvania | 51 Pa.C.S. § 7315.1 | 30 days or more from receipt | No under federal law |
| Texas | Tex. Prop. Code § 92.017 | Written notice plus a qualifying document | No |
| Washington | RCW 59.18.220 | 20 days or more | No |
| Arizona | None found | Federal rules apply | No, under federal law |
| Colorado | None found | Federal rules apply | No, under federal law |
| District of Columbia | None found | Federal rules apply | No, under federal law |
| Nevada | None found | Federal rules apply | No, under federal law |
| Ohio | None found | Federal rules apply | No, under federal law |
| Tennessee | None found | Federal rules apply | No, under federal law |
Two rows are worth pausing on. Washington asks for 20 days under RCW 59.18.220(2), which is shorter than the federal route and therefore usually the better one to use there. Illinois has no early-termination-fee bar of its own in 765 ILCS 705/16, which is counterintuitive and matters: the protection an Illinois renter relies on for that is the federal bar in 3955(e)(1), not the state statute.
"None found" in the table means exactly that. We searched the landlord-tenant title, the militia or military-affairs title and the veterans title in each of those states and found no servicemember termination right. It does not mean one cannot exist. Pennsylvania is the reason we phrase it that way: 51 Pa.C.S. 7315.1 has been law since 2004 and a search of the landlord-tenant title alone missed it completely, because it sits in the Military Affairs title instead.
The notice, and what goes with it
Two things are delivered together under 3955(c)(1)(A): written notice of termination, and a copy of your military orders. The statute prescribes no form and no particular wording, so a short letter is enough. What it does prescribe is delivery.
Subsection (c)(2) lists the methods that count: hand delivery; a private business carrier; United States mail with sufficient postage, return receipt requested, addressed as the lessor has designated; or electronic means, including delivery to an address the lessor designated, posting to a website or repository you have access to, or another electronic method reasonably calculated to ensure actual receipt.
Pick a method that proves the date. Every number on this page counts from the day the notice is delivered. A conversation in the hallway starts no clock you can later evidence. Return receipt, or an email you keep, costs nothing and settles the argument before it starts.
If your landlord refuses
They can refuse in practice, but the section does not give them a veto. Three parts of it answer most of what a landlord will say.
- "There is an early-termination fee in your lease." 3955(e)(1) says in terms that the lessor may not impose an early termination charge. Taxes, summonses, other obligations under the lease and reasonable charges for excess wear that are due and unpaid at termination do survive.
- "You already paid, that money is ours." 3955(f) requires rent paid in advance for any period after the effective date to be refunded within 30 days of that date.
- "I will take you to court." 3955(g) lets a lessor apply to a court before the termination date in your notice, and the court may modify the relief as justice and equity require. It is the one route a landlord genuinely has, and it runs through a judge rather than through the lease.
Some states add a remedy of their own on top. Massachusetts is the clearest: c. 33, s. 13A changes who holds the federal rights and what happens when they are denied. Texas attaches a consequence to a landlord who leaves the statutory warning out of the lease under 92.017(g). Where your state has its own statute, read it alongside the federal one rather than instead of it.
Sources
The federal text on this page was read at the U.S. Government Publishing Office: 50 U.S.C. 3955, U.S. Code 2024 Edition. That document is current through 6 January 2025 according to its own metadata, so an amendment enacted after that date would not appear in it.
State law was read section by section. Where a state publishes its code through a site that refuses outside connections, we name the official publisher and link the source we actually read instead of constructing a link we never opened. Ten of the sixteen state records are marked low confidence for that reason, which is about how the text reached us and not about whether the section exists. Statutes are amended every session: check the text as it reads on the day you need it.