Form-of-the-Week: Three-Day Notice to Pay Rent or Quit – With or Without Rent-Related Fees – Form 575 and 575-1
Default, notice, then cure or vacate
Consider a tenant who defaults on their rental or lease agreement by failing to:
- pay rent and any other amounts due and called for in the rental or lease agreement; or
- perform nonmonetary obligations called for in the rental or lease agreement. [See RPI Form 550 and 551]
On the tenant’s default, the landlord may make a demand on the tenant to cure the default or forfeit their right to possession and vacate the premises. To properly make the demand, the landlord uses one of multiple types of three-day notices to quit. However, only a material breach allows the landlord to forfeit the tenant’s right of possession on expiration of the three-day notice period without payment. [See RPI Form 575 and 575-1]
Failure to perform significant obligations called for in the rental or lease agreement is a material breach. Examples of a material breach include the failure to:
- pay rent;
- maintain the property as agreed;
- pay common area maintenance (CAM) charges; and
- pay utilities.
Conversely, minor breaches, which alone do not justify a three-day notice to cure or quit, include the tenant’s failure to pay:
- late charges;
- interest penalties;
- bad check charges; or
- security deposits. [Keating Preston (1940) 42 CA2d 110]
Some nonmonetary defaults by a tenant cannot be cured. These are known as incurable breaches. Incurable breaches include:
- waste to the premises;
- alienation of the leasehold;
- nuisance; or
- significant criminal activity which has occurred on the leased property.
The landlord’s remedy for an incurable breach is to serve the tenant a notice to quit the premises within three days after service. In this situation, the tenant has no alternative but to vacate. Thus, a landlord’s declaration of forfeiture — the ultimatum to cure the breech — accompanying the three-day notice is unnecessary. The failure cannot be cured and the tenancy cannot be reinstated. [Calif. Code of Civil Procedure §1161(4); see RPI Form 577]