Free Kentucky Residential Lease Agreement

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A configurable Kentucky residential lease agreement that generates a signable multi-page PDF — and the only one that asks whether Kentucky’s landlord-tenant act applies to your property at all. Built to KRS 383.500 to 383.715, and to the general law that governs everywhere the Act was never adopted.

Kentucky KRS 383 Local Option Free PDF 2026 Edition

A Kentucky residential lease agreement sits on top of a question that almost no other state forces you to ask: does the state’s landlord-tenant act apply to this property? Kentucky enacted the Uniform Residential Landlord and Tenant Act at KRS 383.505 to 383.715, but KRS 383.500 made it a local option — the General Assembly authorized cities, counties and urban-county governments to adopt it, in their entirety and without amendment, and it binds only where a local government has done so. Adopting jurisdictions include Louisville/Jefferson County, Lexington-Fayette and Oldham County. In the rest of Kentucky the Act’s two-day entry notice, seven-day pay-or-quit, separate deposit account and retaliation presumption are not law at all, and the general provisions of KRS chapter 383 and Kentucky common law govern instead. Every ranking Kentucky lease page we examined states the Act’s rules as though they were statewide. This form asks the scope question first, and the generated lease branches on the answer.

Complete the fields below to generate a Kentucky residential lease agreement as a signable multi-page PDF. Every field you fill is written into the document, and the generated lease cites the controlling Kentucky section at each point — starting with the scope question that decides whether those sections bind you. Before handing over keys, run proper tenant screening. Pair the signed lease with a Kentucky move-in / move-out checklist, which in this state does double duty: it is your condition record and, if you use it properly, the comprehensive damage listing KRS 383.580 requires you to sign before you take a single dollar of deposit.

Only if the local government adopted it. KRS 383.500 is short enough to quote nearly in full, and it is the single most important sentence in Kentucky residential tenancy law: the General Assembly authorizes cities, counties and urban-county governments to enact the provisions of the Uniform Residential Landlord and Tenant Act as set forth in KRS 383.505 to 383.705; if adopted, those provisions shall be adopted in their entirety and without amendment; and no other ordinance shall be enacted by a city, county or urban-county government relating to the subjects the Act embraces.

Three consequences follow, and they matter to drafting. First, adoption is all or nothing — a Kentucky city cannot take the deposit rules and leave the entry rule, and cannot soften a period it dislikes. Second, an adopting local government is then preempted from legislating separately on the same subjects, which is why the Act reads identically from one adopting jurisdiction to the next. Third, in a non-adopting jurisdiction there is nothing to apply: KRS 383.505 to 383.715 is not partly in force, it is simply not in force.

The Act’s own general provisions confirm the picture. KRS 383.505 sets out its purposes and directs that it be liberally construed to encourage landlords and tenants to maintain and improve the quality of housing and to make the law uniform among the states that enact it. KRS 383.510 provides that, unless displaced by the Act, the principles of law and equity supplement it — and where the Act is absent altogether, those principles do the whole job. Our Kentucky landlord-tenant laws guide covers the wider framework.

Note one further limit that survives even inside an adopting jurisdiction. KRS 383.535 excludes seven arrangements from the Act: residence at an institution incidental to detention or to medical, geriatric, educational, counselling or religious service; occupancy under a contract of sale by the purchaser or a successor; occupancy by a member of a fraternal or social organization in a portion of a structure run for its benefit; transient occupancy in a hotel or motel; occupancy by an employee whose right to occupy is conditional on employment about the premises; occupancy by a condominium owner or a cooperative proprietary lessee; and — the one that matters most in Kentucky — occupancy of a dwelling unit located on land devoted to the production of livestock, livestock products, poultry or poultry products, or the growing of tobacco or other crops including timber. A farm tenancy in Jefferson County is outside the Act even though Jefferson County adopted it.

Several, and there is no official list. Kentucky maintains no central register of adopting jurisdictions, which is precisely why stale lists circulate. Rather than repeat one, we verified adoption by reading the local codes themselves, and we recommend you do the same for your own address.

• Louisville/Jefferson County Metro Government. Louisville Metro Code of Ordinances Chapter 151 is titled Landlord and Tenant Code, and section 151.01 provides that the chapter “shall be known and may be cited as the Uniform Residential Landlord and Tenant Act.” Its sections track the statute one for one — prohibited provisions, security deposits, disclosure, the landlord’s maintenance obligations, right of access — and it carries a statutory reference to KRS 383.500 through 383.705. Adopted by Jefferson County Ordinance 22-1984, effective 24 July 1984, and amended by Louisville Metro Ordinance 134-2006.
• Lexington-Fayette Urban County Government. Section 12-54 of its Code of Ordinances, headed Landlord-tenant act adopted, provides that “the urban county government hereby enacts the provisions of the Uniform Residential Landlord and Tenant Act as set forth in the Kentucky Revised Statutes,” by Ordinance 98-84, adopted 28 June 1984. An editor’s note in the same chapter records that Lexington repealed its own earlier landlord-tenant sections in favour of the Act. Section 12-55 separately codifies the retaliation prohibition.
• Oldham County. Section 150.020 of the county code, Adoption by reference, adopts the Act “in their entirety and without amendment in order to codify the law respecting contracts between residential landlords and tenants,” and states that the law encompasses all of the county, by Ordinance KOC 90-920.180 passed 16 October 1990.

Other Kentucky cities and counties have adopted the Act as well, and any of them may adopt or repeal in future. The reliable method is procedural rather than list-based: ask the city clerk, the county clerk or the urban-county government for the address of the property whether the Uniform Residential Landlord and Tenant Act has been adopted, and read the local code. It takes one phone call, and it is the difference between a lease that describes your obligations and one that describes somebody else’s.

The lease, plus the older general provisions of KRS chapter 383, plus common law. This is the half of Kentucky that no ranking template addresses, and the statute itself marks it out. KRS 383.195 begins: “In those jurisdictions where the Uniform Residential Landlord and Tenant Act is not in effect, a tenancy at will or by sufferance may be terminated by the landlord giving one (1) month’s notice, in writing, to the tenant requiring him to remove.” That is the non-adopting default for ending an open-ended tenancy, and it is longer than the Act’s thirty days for a month-to-month tenancy.

KRS 383.160 governs holding over beyond a term and works quite differently from the Act. For a term or tenancy of a year or more, a tenant who holds over acquires no right to remain, and possession may be recovered without demand or notice if proceedings are instituted within ninety days; if they are not, no proceeding is allowed until one year has expired, at which point a year-to-year tenancy has effectively arisen. For a tenancy of less than a year the equivalent windows are thirty days and sixty days. A landlord who lets those windows lapse can find a new tenancy has come into being by operation of statute.

What is absent matters as much. In a non-adopting Kentucky jurisdiction there is no statutory security deposit procedure, no statutory notice period before entry, no statutory habitability duty of the KRS 383.595 kind, no statutory repair-and-deduct, and no statutory retaliation presumption. That does not leave the tenant with nothing — contract terms, local housing and building codes, and general principles of law and equity all still operate — but it does mean the lease is the primary source of rights. That is why the generator, when you tell it the Act does not apply, does not simply delete the protections: it re-states the Act’s standards as express contractual undertakings that the tenant can enforce as terms of the agreement.

One thing does not change with adoption. Kentucky’s forcible entry and detainer procedure at KRS 383.200 to 383.285 is not part of the Act and applies statewide. A forcible detainer includes the refusal of a tenant to give possession after the expiration of the term, or of a tenant at will or by sufferance after the determination of the will. Possession is recovered through that proceeding in every county, and never by lockout or utility shut-off. See Kentucky eviction notice laws.

Any amount — Kentucky sets no statutory maximum. Neither KRS 383.580 nor any other Kentucky statute caps a residential security deposit. What KRS 383.580 does instead is impose a procedure, and it is stricter than most states’ caps because the sanction for skipping it is total.

The account rule comes first. Under KRS 383.580(1), all landlords of residential property requiring security deposits before occupancy must deposit all tenants’ security deposits in an account used only for that purpose, at a bank or other lending institution subject to regulation by the Commonwealth of Kentucky or by an agency of the United States government. And — this is the part templates omit — prospective tenants shall be informed of the location of the separate account and the account number. Not that an account exists. The location and the number.

Then the sanction, at KRS 383.580(4): no landlord shall be entitled to retain any portion of a security deposit if the deposit was not deposited in a separate account as subsection (1) requires and the initial and final damage listings required by subsections (2) and (3) were not provided. A landlord who commingles the deposit and skips the listings can be facing a unit with genuine damage and still have no right to keep a cent of it. Our Kentucky security deposit laws guide goes through the section subsection by subsection.

Kentucky sets no return deadline at all. This surprises people, and it is where competitor pages most often go wrong. KRS 383.580 contains no number of days within which a deposit must be returned. The two periods it does contain govern something else entirely.

Under KRS 383.580(6), if a tenant leaves without paying the last month’s rent and does not demand return of the deposit, the landlord may, after thirty days, remove the deposit from the account and apply any excess to the debt owing. Under KRS 383.580(7), if the tenant leaves owing no rent and a refund is due, the landlord sends notice of the amount of the refund to the tenant’s last known or reasonably determinable address; if no response arrives within sixty days of that notice, the landlord may remove the deposit from the account and retain it free of any claim by the tenant.

Both are rules for unclaimed deposits: the first lets a landlord clear an abandoned deposit against arrears, the second lets a landlord close the file on a tenant who never responded. Neither is a deadline for paying a tenant back. A landlord should still account promptly — the move-out listing is due at termination of occupancy in any event — and a tenant should give a forwarding address in writing, because the sixty-day clock in subsection (7) starts from a notice sent to whatever address the landlord can reasonably determine. Use our Kentucky security deposit itemization form and deposit return letter.

They are the heart of KRS 383.580, and they bind both sides. Under subsection (2), before the tenant tenders any consideration deemed to be a security deposit, the landlord must present a comprehensive listing of any then-existing damage to the unit that would be the basis of a charge against the deposit, with the estimated dollar cost of repairing that damage. The tenant has the right to inspect the premises to check the listing’s accuracy before taking occupancy. Both parties sign it, and the signatures are conclusive evidence of the listing’s accuracy — though not conclusive as to latent defects.

Under subsection (3) the same exercise runs in reverse at the termination of occupancy: the landlord inspects, compiles a comprehensive listing of damage forming the basis of a charge with estimated repair costs, the tenant may inspect to check it, and both sign.

Now the part that costs tenants their claims. If the tenant refuses to sign either listing, the tenant shall state specifically in writing the items on the list dissented from, and shall sign that statement of dissent. Under KRS 383.580(5) a tenant who disputes the final listing may bring an action in District Court, but the claim is limited to the items specifically dissented from — and a tenant who fails to sign the listing, or fails to dissent specifically, shall not be entitled to recover any damages under the section. A tenant who simply refuses to engage with the paperwork has, by statute, given up the argument.

That symmetry is unusual and worth stating plainly: KRS 383.580 punishes a landlord who skips the account and the listings by removing the right to retain anything, and punishes a tenant who skips the dissent procedure by removing the right to recover anything. Both are procedural traps, and both are avoidable by doing the paperwork in the right order.

Two days where the Act applies; none by statute where it does not. KRS 383.615(3) provides that, except in case of emergency or unless it is impracticable to do so, the landlord shall give the tenant at least two days’ notice of intent to enter, and may enter only at reasonable times. The same section makes the arrangement mutual: under subsection (1) the tenant shall not unreasonably withhold consent to entry to inspect the premises, make necessary or agreed repairs, decorations, alterations or improvements, supply necessary or agreed services, or exhibit the unit to prospective or actual purchasers, mortgagees, tenants, workmen or contractors.

Subsection (2) allows entry without consent in an emergency. Subsection (3) also forbids the landlord to abuse the right of access or use it to harass the tenant. Subsection (4) closes the door on everything else: the landlord has no other right of access except pursuant to court order, as permitted by KRS 383.665 and 383.670(2), or where the tenant has abandoned or surrendered the premises.

In a jurisdiction that never adopted the Act, none of that is law, and there is no Kentucky statute setting an entry notice period. The lease is the only source. That is why the form asks you to pick a period in both cases, and why the generated lease creates it as an enforceable contractual term with an emergency exception. See Kentucky landlord entry laws, and document each visit with a dated Kentucky notice to enter form.

One related provision is often misread. KRS 383.620 permits the rental agreement to require the tenant to notify the landlord of an anticipated extended absence in excess of seven days, no later than the first day of that absence — but only if the agreement says so. KRS 383.670(1) then gives the landlord actual damages where the tenant willfully fails to give a notice the lease required. If the lease is silent, there is no duty and no remedy. KRS 383.670(2) separately allows entry at times reasonably necessary during any tenant absence exceeding seven days.

KRS 383.595 sets five duties, and the fifth carries dates that no generic template contains. The landlord shall comply with the requirements of applicable building and housing codes materially affecting health and safety; make all repairs and do whatever is necessary to put and keep the premises in a fit and habitable condition; keep all common areas clean and safe; maintain in good and safe working order all electrical, plumbing, sanitary, heating, ventilating, air-conditioning and other facilities and appliances, including elevators, supplied or required to be supplied by the landlord; and supply running water and reasonable amounts of hot water at all times, and reasonable heat between October 1 and May 1.

That heating season has two express carve-outs on the face of the statute: where the building that includes the dwelling unit is not required by law to be equipped for that purpose, and where the unit is so constructed that heat or hot water is generated by an installation within the tenant’s exclusive control and supplied by a direct public utility connection. Subsection (2) adds a priority rule: where the building-code duty in paragraph (a) is greater than a duty imposed by another paragraph, the code duty controls.

KRS 383.595 also permits shifting some maintenance to the tenant, on conditions. For a single-family residence the parties may agree in writing that the tenant performs the paragraph (e) duties and specified repairs, maintenance tasks, alterations and remodelling, but only if the transaction is entered into in good faith and not for the purpose of evading the landlord’s obligations. For any other dwelling unit, subsection (4) adds three further conditions: the agreement must be in a separate writing signed by the parties and supported by adequate consideration, it must not cover work needed to cure a building-code noncompliance, and it must not diminish the landlord’s obligations to other tenants.

The tenant’s side is at KRS 383.605: comply with tenant obligations under building and housing codes materially affecting health and safety; keep the occupied part of the premises as clean and safe as its condition permits; dispose of ashes, garbage, rubbish and other waste in a clean and safe manner; keep plumbing fixtures as clean as their condition permits; use all facilities and appliances reasonably; not deliberately or negligently destroy, deface, damage, impair or remove any part of the premises or knowingly permit anyone to do so; and not disturb neighbours’ peaceful enjoyment. KRS 383.610 lets the landlord adopt rules concerning the tenant’s use and occupancy, and KRS 383.590 requires the landlord to deliver possession at the commencement of the term. More at our Kentucky habitability laws guide.

Where the Act applies, Kentucky gives a tenant four distinct routes, and choosing the wrong one can foreclose the others.

Terminate under KRS 383.625. For a material noncompliance with the rental agreement, or a noncompliance with KRS 383.595 materially affecting health and safety, the tenant delivers written notice specifying the acts and omissions and stating that the agreement will terminate on a date not less than thirty days after receipt if the breach is not remedied in fourteen days. If the landlord remedies it in time, the lease does not terminate. If substantially the same breach recurs within six months, the tenant may terminate on at least fourteen days’ notice. The tenant may not terminate for a condition caused by the tenant, the tenant’s family or a guest. Subsection (2) separately allows damages and injunctive relief, and subsection (4) requires the landlord to return all prepaid rent on termination.

Repair and deduct under KRS 383.635. Available where the landlord willfully and materially fails to comply, the noncompliance materially affects health and safety, and the reasonable cost of compliance is less than one hundred dollars or an amount equal to one-half of the monthly rent, whichever is greater. The tenant gives written notice of intent to correct at the landlord’s expense; if the landlord willfully fails to comply within fourteen days, or as promptly as an emergency requires, the tenant may have the work done in a workmanlike manner and, after submitting an itemized statement for work actually done and paid in full, deduct the actual and reasonable cost from rent up to that limit. Not available where the tenant or the tenant’s household caused the condition.

Essential services under KRS 383.640. Where the landlord willfully fails to supply heat, running water, hot water, electric, gas or another essential service, the tenant gives written notice and may then procure reasonable amounts of the service and deduct the actual and reasonable cost from rent; or recover damages based on the diminution in the fair rental value of the unit; or procure reasonable substitute housing and be excused from rent for the period of noncompliance — in which case the tenant may also recover reasonable attorney’s fees. Crucially, subsection (3) provides that a tenant who proceeds under this section may not proceed under KRS 383.625 or 383.635 as to that breach. The routes are alternatives, not a menu to combine.

Defend and counterclaim under KRS 383.645. In an action for possession based on nonpayment, or an action for rent while the tenant is in possession, the tenant may counterclaim for any amount recoverable, and the court may order rent paid into court pending determination and then apportion it. If no rent remains due after that exercise, judgment is entered for the tenant in the possession action. But if the tenant’s defence or counterclaim is without merit and not raised in good faith, the landlord may recover reasonable attorney’s fees.

Two backstops sit behind all four. KRS 383.655 gives the tenant, where the landlord unlawfully removes or excludes the tenant or willfully interrupts an essential service, the right to recover possession or terminate and, either way, recover up to three months’ periodic rent plus a reasonable attorney’s fee. KRS 383.690 forbids the landlord to recover or take possession by action or otherwise, including by willful diminution of services, except on abandonment or surrender or as the Act permits. Kentucky has no self-help eviction.

Seven days for unpaid rent, where the Act applies. Under KRS 383.660(2), if rent is unpaid when due and the tenant fails to pay within seven days after written notice by the landlord of the nonpayment and of the landlord’s intention to terminate if the rent is not paid within that period, the landlord may terminate the rental agreement. Two details are routinely lost: the seven days run from the notice, not from the due date, and the notice must actually state the intention to terminate. Use our Kentucky seven-day notice to pay rent or quit.

For any other material noncompliance by the tenant, KRS 383.660(1) is more awkward than any summary admits. It requires written notice specifying the acts and omissions and stating that the agreement will terminate on a date not less than fourteen days after receipt — and then, in the very next sentence, provides that the agreement terminates as stated in the notice if the breach is not remedied in fifteen days. The two figures do not line up. Because the statute gives the tenant fifteen days to cure, a Kentucky notice that sets a termination date only fourteen days out invites an argument the landlord does not need. The safe practice, and the one this generator adopts, is to set a termination date at least fifteen days after receipt. A repeat of substantially the same breach within six months supports termination on at least fourteen days’ written notice. Build it with our Kentucky notice to cure or quit.

Under KRS 383.660(3), the landlord may recover damages and obtain injunctive relief for any noncompliance with the rental agreement or with KRS 383.605 or 383.610, and where the tenant’s noncompliance is willful, may recover actual damages and reasonable attorney’s fees. KRS 383.685 preserves that claim after termination: the landlord may have a claim for possession and rent, and a separate claim for actual damages and fees.

Notice terminates the tenancy; it does not deliver possession. Possession comes from the forcible entry and detainer proceeding under KRS 383.200 to 383.285, which applies in every Kentucky county whether or not the Act was adopted.

Where the Act applies, KRS 383.695 sets three notice periods, not two, and almost every summary prints only the first two.

• Week-to-week — seven days. Either party may terminate by written notice given at least seven days before the termination date specified in the notice.
• Month-to-month — thirty days. Either party may terminate by written notice given at least thirty days before the periodic rental date specified in the notice.
• A tenancy that began on the termination of a written lease — ten days. Either party may terminate on at least ten days’ written notice before the termination date specified — except that if that tenant fails to pay rent within ten days after the day it becomes due, the landlord may terminate the tenancy at any time without notice.

The holdover remedy is unusually strong and rankers omit it. Under KRS 383.695(4), if the tenant remains in possession without the landlord’s consent after expiration or termination, the landlord may bring an action for possession; and if the holdover is willful and not in good faith, the landlord may also recover an amount not more than three months’ periodic rent or threefold the actual damages sustained, whichever is greater, together with reasonable attorney’s fees. If the landlord consents to continued occupancy, KRS 383.565(3) applies and the tenancy becomes week-to-week for a roomer paying weekly rent and month-to-month in all other cases.

Where the Act was never adopted, the relevant provisions are KRS 383.195 (one month’s written notice to end a tenancy at will or by sufferance) and KRS 383.160 (the ninety-day and thirty-day holdover windows described above). See Kentucky lease termination laws, our Kentucky breaking-lease guide, and the Kentucky notice of non-renewal.

KRS 383.565(2) provides that rent is payable without demand or notice at the time and place agreed upon by the parties. Unless otherwise agreed, rent is payable at the dwelling unit; periodic rent is payable at the beginning of any term of one month or less and otherwise in equal monthly instalments at the beginning of each month; and rent is uniformly apportionable from day to day. Subsection (3) supplies the default term: unless the rental agreement fixes a definite term, the tenancy is week-to-week for a roomer who pays weekly rent, and month-to-month in all other cases. Subsection (1) confirms that the parties may include any terms and conditions not prohibited by the Act or another rule of law.

Kentucky sets no statutory grace period and no cap on late fees, inside or outside the Act. The lease must state the fee for it to be chargeable, and the practical limit is judicial: a charge out of proportion to the landlord’s actual loss invites challenge as an unenforceable penalty rather than a reasonable estimate of damages. Our Kentucky late fee laws guide covers the drafting, and Kentucky rent increase laws covers changing rent on a periodic tenancy — which in an adopting jurisdiction runs through the KRS 383.695 termination notice, and is separately constrained by the retaliation rule below.

Four, listed at KRS 383.570(1). A rental agreement may not provide that the tenant: agrees to waive or forego rights or remedies under KRS 383.505 to 383.715; authorizes any person to confess judgment on a claim arising out of the rental agreement; agrees to pay the landlord’s attorney’s fees; or agrees to the exculpation or limitation of any liability of the landlord arising under law, or to indemnify the landlord for that liability or the costs connected with it. Under subsection (2), a prohibited provision included in a rental agreement is unenforceable.

The attorney-fee ban deserves a paragraph of its own, because it is where templates go wrong in an instructive way. Kentucky’s ban is flat. Unlike Arizona, which permits a clause so long as it runs to the prevailing party, Kentucky gives no exception at all — so the reciprocal wording that rescues a fee clause elsewhere does not rescue it here. That is why this form offers no attorney-fee checkbox: the clause a generic template would insert is precisely the clause the statute voids.

What confuses drafters is that the landlord can still end up with fees. The Act awards them by statute in four places — for a willful tenant noncompliance under KRS 383.660(3), after termination under KRS 383.685, for a willful bad-faith holdover under KRS 383.695(4), and against a meritless bad-faith defence under KRS 383.645(1) — and awards them to the tenant for substitute housing after a wrongful failure to supply essential services under KRS 383.640(2) and for unlawful ouster under KRS 383.655. Fees are available in Kentucky. They just cannot come from the lease.

Two further limits round out the picture. KRS 383.555 lets a court refuse to enforce a rental agreement or a settlement it finds unconscionable as a matter of law, and KRS 383.550 imposes an obligation of good faith on every duty and every act the Act governs. Note the scope caveat that runs through this whole page: KRS 383.570 is part of the Act, so its ban bites in an adopting jurisdiction. This build applies it everywhere anyway, because a clause that is void in Louisville and merely unattractive elsewhere is not worth printing.

Where the Act applies, yes — and the presumption does real work. KRS 383.705(1) provides that a landlord may not retaliate by increasing rent or decreasing services, or by bringing or threatening to bring an action for possession, after the tenant has complained to a governmental agency charged with enforcement of a building or housing code of a violation materially affecting health and safety; complained to the landlord of a violation under KRS 383.595; or organized or become a member of a tenants’ union or similar organization.

Subsection (2) is the operative part. The tenant is entitled to the remedies in KRS 383.655 and has a defence in any retaliatory action for possession. Evidence of a complaint within one year before the alleged act of retaliation creates a presumption that the landlord’s conduct was retaliatory — and the statute defines the word: the trier of fact must find the presumed fact unless and until evidence is introduced that would support a finding of its nonexistence. The presumption does not arise if the tenant complained after notice of a proposed rent increase or diminution of services, which is a sequencing rule worth knowing on both sides.

Subsection (3) preserves three grounds on which the landlord may still sue for possession: where the code violation was caused primarily by lack of reasonable care by the tenant or someone on the premises with the tenant’s consent; where the tenant is in default in rent; or where compliance with the code requires alteration, remodelling or demolition that would effectively deprive the tenant of the use of the unit. Subsection (4) confirms that bringing such an action does not release the landlord from liability under KRS 383.625(2).

In a non-adopting jurisdiction there is no statutory retaliation defence. Notably, Lexington-Fayette codified the retaliation prohibition separately at section 12-55 of its own code alongside its adoption of the Act.

Two under state law, both inside the Act, plus one federal requirement that applies everywhere.

Manager and owner identification — KRS 383.585. The landlord, or any person authorized to enter into a rental agreement on the landlord’s behalf, must disclose to the tenant in writing at or before the commencement of the tenancy the name and address of the person authorized to manage the premises, and the name and address of an owner of the premises or a person authorized to act for the owner for the purpose of service of process and for receiving and receipting for notices and demands. Subsection (2) requires the information to be kept current and makes the section enforceable against successor landlords, owners and managers. Subsection (3) supplies the sanction: a person who fails to comply becomes the agent of each landlord for service of process, for receiving notices and demands, and for performing the landlord’s obligations, expending all rent collected from the premises for that purpose. It is an unusual and pointed remedy, and it is why this form collects four separate name-and-address fields.

Security deposit account location and number — KRS 383.580(1). Prospective tenants must be informed of the location of the separate account and its account number. This has no equivalent in most states and is the single most-missed Kentucky requirement.

Federal lead-based paint — 42 U.S.C. 4852d. Required for any dwelling built before 1978, with the pamphlet and any known records or reports. Because it is federal, it applies in every Kentucky county regardless of local adoption. Our Kentucky lead-based paint disclosure form handles it.

Kentucky requires no other residential lease disclosure. There is no radon notice, no flood-risk disclosure, no bed bug notice, no mold disclosure, no asbestos notice, no methamphetamine-contamination history, no ordnance-proximity notice, no offender-registry notice and no shared-utility billing disclosure. Any Kentucky template carrying those blocks was written for another jurisdiction. The form above offers mold as an explicitly voluntary block, labelled as not required, for a landlord who has actual knowledge and wants it on the record.

• Assuming the Act applies. KRS 383.500 makes it a local option. Confirm adoption for the property’s own city or county before relying on a single one of its deadlines.
• Assuming the Act does not apply because the property is rural. Oldham County adopted it across the whole county. Rural is not a proxy for non-adopting; only the local code answers the question.
• Quoting a Kentucky deposit return deadline. There is none. The thirty and sixty-day figures in KRS 383.580(6) and (7) govern unclaimed deposits.
• Taking deposit money before presenting the move-in damage listing. KRS 383.580(2) requires the listing before the tenant tenders any consideration deemed a security deposit.
• Commingling the deposit. KRS 383.580(4) then leaves the landlord entitled to retain nothing, however damaged the unit.
• Never telling the tenant the account number. KRS 383.580(1) requires the location and the number, not merely the fact of an account.
• Tenants refusing to sign the damage listing without dissenting in writing. KRS 383.580(5) then bars any recovery under the section.
• Setting a fourteen-day termination date for a non-rent breach. KRS 383.660(1) gives fifteen days to remedy; set the date at least fifteen days out.
• Counting the seven days for unpaid rent from the due date. KRS 383.660(2) runs them from the written notice, which must also state the intention to terminate.
• Printing an attorney-fee clause. KRS 383.570(1)(c) voids it, with no prevailing-party exception.
• Forgetting the third termination period. KRS 383.695(3) sets ten days for a tenancy that began when a written lease ended, with no notice at all if that tenant is ten days late.
• Combining the repair remedies. KRS 383.640(3) bars a tenant who proceeds on essential services from also proceeding under KRS 383.625 or 383.635 for the same breach.
• Raising the rent shortly after a code complaint. KRS 383.705(2) presumes retaliation from a complaint within the preceding year.
• Assuming a farm dwelling is covered. KRS 383.535(7) excludes a unit on land devoted to livestock, poultry, tobacco or other crops including timber, even in an adopting county.

A well-drafted lease decides who wins a dispute; screening decides whether there is one. Kentucky rewards care at both ends: the deposit procedure at KRS 383.580 is unforgiving of paperwork done out of order, and the scope question at KRS 383.500 means a landlord can be operating under a materially different rulebook from a colleague one county away. Verifiable income, a clean payment history and no prior eviction filings remain the strongest predictors of a quiet tenancy. Our tenant screening report covers credit, eviction filings, criminal background and employment verification. Screen first, then paper the tenancy with this lease.

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