Also known as: term of years · terms for years · tenancy for years · estate for years
Written by attorneys · grounded in primary & secondary sources — see below
A leasehold estate whose duration is fixed in units of a year or multiples or divisions thereof. The estate ends automatically upon expiration of the stated term without any requirement of notice.
Tonya Takahashi leased warehouse space to Thunderbolt Motors for exactly five years beginning January 1. The lease document set the end date with no renewal option or notice clause. When the five years expired Thunderbolt Motors vacated and Tonya Takahashi took possession without serving any termination notice.
Tori Taylor rented an apartment to Tobias Thomas under a written lease ending June 30. On July 1 Tobias Thomas remained in possession. Tori Taylor brought an eviction action that succeeded because the fixed term had ended and no notice was required to terminate the estate.
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Tessa Takahashi leased shoreline property to Tidal Energy for a ten-year term. A government moratorium suspended all use for thirty-two months. The lease term continued to run during the moratorium and the estate reverted to Tessa Takahashi at the original calendar end date.
Tabitha Taylor leased retail space to Trinity Pharmaceuticals for three years. After repeated flooding Trinity Pharmaceuticals vacated and stopped paying rent. The court treated the lease as a term for years that had not yet expired and evaluated whether the flooding amounted to constructive eviction.
Twin Rivers Bank held a twenty-year lease on office space that was set to expire in 2025. When Congress extended certain copyright terms the bank argued its lease should receive similar extension treatment but the court held that the fixed calendar term controlled and the estate ended on the original date.
Tanya Tang leased a storage unit for one year. After the year ended she remained in possession under a later civil commitment order. The original term for years had already terminated automatically and the commitment created a new and separate basis for possession.
A term for years ends automatically on the calendar date stated in the lease. A periodic tenancy continues indefinitely until one party gives proper notice of termination.
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No notice is required. The lease itself supplies the termination date so the estate ends by its own terms when that date arrives.
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The tenant becomes a holdover. The landlord may treat the tenant as a trespasser or as a periodic tenant depending on the jurisdiction and the landlord's election.
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A term for years longer than one year ordinarily must satisfy the statute of frauds and therefore requires a signed writing that states the duration.
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…as a whole.' Both dimensions of a real property interest—the metes and bounds describing its geographic dimensions and the term of years describing its temporal aspect—must be considered when viewing the interest in its entirety. A permanent deprivation of all use is a taking of the parcel as a whole, but a temporary…