Are you wondering whether you can sue your roommate for breaking a lease? Perhaps they failed to pay rent or a deposit for their pet or moved out with months left on the lease, leaving you holding the bag for an entire monthly rental payment. With housing costs in rural and urban centres increasing exponentially over the last few decades in North America and elsewhere, many people, especially younger folks, are forced to cohabitate with roommates.

But disputes between roommates are commonplace and can lead to all kinds of issues, including lawsuits if a formal lease agreement is involved. Many people, though, may be confused about the legal landscape when it comes to conflicts between roommates. A common question that comes up, of course, is “Can I sue my roommate for breaking a lease?” 

Legal rights involving tenancy agreements and roommate agreements can be difficult to understand no matter where you live. While some people who rent may be under month-to-month tenancy agreements with no fixed term, residential leases often carry fixed terms and renewal conditions setting out the deal between property owners and their tenants. 

If you want to speak to a Realtor, we suggest this one.

Always sign a lease agreement

In most Canadian provinces, residential tenancy legislation governs the relationships between landlords and tenants, setting rates for deposits landlords are allowed to charge and establishing quasi-judicial tribunals to arbitrate disputes between landlords and tenants.

But most provincial tenancy boards don’t have jurisdiction over disputes between roommates over broken leases, unpaid rent or deposits, and other disagreements that arise. At their heart, disputes between roommates over the breaching of a lease are contractual disputes, and since they don’t usually involve large sums of money, it’s up to provincial small claims courts rather than tenancy tribunals and boards to resolve them.  

Provincial residential tenancy laws

In British Columbia, for example, the Residential Tenancy Act and the Residential Tenancy Board don’t claim jurisdiction over disputes between roommates. When homes have multiple rooms, one person could be listed on the original lease who oversees the other rooms, creating roommate agreements with other tenants that do not fall under the province’s residential tenancy laws.

In other words, the residential tenancy laws only cover agreements between landlords and tenants listed on leases or rental agreements. While those contracts can contain provisions for additional occupants that may move in after the fact, roommates not listed on the original agreements have little recourse under provincial tenancy laws. 

Renters in British Columbia who live with roommates can be considered co-tenants, tenants in common, or simply roommates or occupiers.

Co-tenants typically split everything down the middle and have equal responsibilities under a single lease or tenancy agreement, but they’re also allowed to divide expenses and chores among themselves as they see fit. Co-tenant arrangements are common among couples and family members and friends. To be considered a co-tenant, both or all parties must be listed on the tenancy agreement or lease. 

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As co-tenants, each party is bound by the terms of the tenancy agreement, meaning that if one person comes up short on the rent for a month, their co-tenants would be on the hook for the shortfall. The same thing goes if one person causes damage to a unit. Should a landlord seek compensation for the damage, they can name everyone listed in the original contract, even if the damage was one co-tenants fault. 

But co-tenancy agreements don’t fall under the Residential Tenancy Act, and disputes over unpaid rent or deposits are up to the courts if people can’t resolve the matter between themselves. When one of the co-tenants decides to move out of a rental unit, their former roommates would still be responsible for the full rent on the unit. After that though, should someone new move in, signing a new co-tenancy agreement with the landlord would likely be required since one party to the original agreement is no longer part of the deal.

Another arrangement involves “tenants in common,” where people live in the same rental home but have their own deals with the property’s landlord. Tenants in common don’t have to worry about being held responsible for another person’s problematic behaviour, whether it’s not paying rent or damaging the unit.

Under these arrangements, tenants in common have no control over who they potentially live with, however, and have to rely on landlords to resolve disputes between them or, in more extreme cases, the court system because tenants in common are also not covered by the protections of the provincial Residential Tenancy Act. 

Small claims court for tenancy legal issues

Several decisions of the British Columbia Residential Tenancy Board have outlined the difference between tenants, co-tenants, and roommates or occupants. In one case, for example, a landlord added a roommate to a tenancy agreement without the original occupant’s consent. The Residential Tenancy Board found that they hadn’t agreed to an “assignment” of the original fixed-term lease to the new tenant as a means of keeping the original tenant’s portion of the security deposit. 

In Ontario, the Residential Tenancy Act and its Landlord and Tenant Board govern tenant relationships. Like other provinces, the act and the board don’t cover agreements between individual roommates, and that’s where much of the confusion around tenancy laws lies.

For instance, rented homes with multiple rooms that are, say, shared with the landlord are considered rooming or boarding houses. Being a border-sharing home with a property owner means you might not be covered by the same protections as a tenant under provincial legislation. 

Ontario is somewhat unique, though, because it also has a Rental Housing Enforcement Unit that can issue stiff fines to both tenants and landlords who violate provincial tenancy laws. Offences under the act include wrongful evictions, unlawful charges for vital services such as water and power, and other acts that go against Ontario’s Residential Tenancy Act.

Roommate agreements

Landlords can face up to $250,000 in fines for RTA offences, and tenants can face fines of up to $50,000 for certain contraventions. But the provincial Landlord and Tenant Board don’t hear cases involving disputes between roommates, essentially considering unlisted occupants on a lease or tenancy agreement as “guests” who don’t enjoy the protections and rights afforded to registered tenants.

As “guests” of the tenant, therefore, they can’t apply for dispute resolution under the act to the Landlord and Tenant Board because they don’t have a contractual relationship with the property’s landlord. 

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For renters in Alberta, the provincial Residential Tenancies Act sets out obligations of both landlords and tenants, but like other provincial laws for rental housing, it doesn’t cover relationships between roommates.

That’s where so-called roommate agreements come in, and they often spell out how tenants can split the rent and bills, while also containing provisions about proper notice for moving out, the amount needed to cover damage and pet deposits, as well as chores such as lawn mowing and other common-area maintenance tasks. 

Sue my roommate for breach of lease

Disputes between landlords and tenants are handled by provincial tenancy boards typically, but lease disputes between roommates are up to the courts. Since they usually don’t involve large sums of money, they’ll end up in provincial lower courts or in the case of British Columbia, the Civil Resolution Tribunal, which has jurisdiction over monetary disputes up to $35,000. 

In a case heard by the Civil Resolution Tribunal in 2020 in B.C., known as Nelson v. O’Callaghan, the tribunal ordered that the respondent O’Callaghan pay the applicant Nelson more than $1,900 in unreturned deposits after she moved out.

O’Callaghan, however, claimed she damaged the property and didn’t pay her share of the internet and utilities. He claimed she was wrongfully suing him and sought $2,000 for the alleged property damage and breach of the lease, and an additional $1,000 for the stress the lawsuit caused him. 

Co-tenants and a new roommate

The tribunal found that the pair had agreed to a six-month term under a roommate agreement, but it was never formally signed. The tribunal found paid deposits to the roommate on the implied term that they’d be returned upon moving out. O’Callaghan had taken the deposits for potential damage to the property but had kept them wrongfully for alleged breaches of their roommate agreement. 

O’Callaghan’s counterclaim against his former roommate was not a total failure, however. The tribunal rejected his claims for lost rent after Nelson had moved out but did find that she owed a portion of a move-in fee and a move-out violation charged by the building’s strata council. O’Callaghan also tried to claim that his original 12-month lease with the landlord superseded the six-month roommate agreement with Nelson. 

Moreover, the tribunal found she never agreed to pay a fee for breaching the unsigned roommate agreement but did admit to owning a small amount for unpaid utilities. Though he failed to prove she had paid rent late on occasion, the tribunal rejected claims that the lawsuit had caused him undue “stress” warranting damages under his counterclaim because “minor inconveniences and trivial upsets are not compensable.” Being a party to a lawsuit, the tribunal found, is not a “harm” for which someone can claim compensation, rejecting O’Callaghan’s bid for $1,000 in damages. 

Sue my roommate for breaking a lease conclusion

Living with roommates, whether they’re long-time friends, acquaintances, or random people you find on the internet, it’s important to make sure you understand what kind of tenancy situation you’ve gotten yourself into. If you’re the only name on a tenancy agreement or lease, your roommates wouldn’t be covered by the provisions of provincial residential tenancy laws.

You can kick them out for not paying rent or smoking inside without the worry of being hauled in front of a tenancy arbitrator should they make a complaint. But if you and your roommate both sign a lease and they decide to move out before the term is up, they can indeed be on the hook for breaching the terms of the contract should they fail to pay up.  

We hope you found this guide helpful on if you can sue your roommate.