Free Delaware Lead Paint Disclosure

A Delaware lead paint disclosure is the federally mandated form a landlord delivers to a prospective tenant before any lease of residential property built before 1978. It carries the fixed federal lead warning statement, states the lessor’s actual knowledge of lead-based paint and hazards, lists the records being handed over, documents the tenant’s receipt of the EPA pamphlet Protect Your Family From Lead in Your Home, captures any agent’s acknowledgment, and is signed and dated by every party. Authority is 42 U.S.C. 4852d (Section 1018 of Title X, the Residential Lead-Based Paint Hazard Reduction Act of 1992), implemented at 40 CFR Part 745 Subpart F (EPA) and 24 CFR Part 35 Subpart A (HUD). Delaware is unusual: it has enacted a genuine state lead regime of its own at 25 Del. C. Chapter 54, requiring every pre-1978 rental to be certified lead safe or lead free — but that chapter is not yet implemented, and the dates published elsewhere are drawn from superseded drafts. This page separates what you owe today from what is coming, and cites the enacted text for both. See our Delaware landlord-tenant laws overview for the surrounding code. Generate the form below, then read on.

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Delaware lead paint disclosure overview

The lead paint disclosure — often called the Section 1018 disclosure, after the 1992 statute that created it — is the formal federal notice a Delaware landlord delivers to a prospective tenant for any residential property built before 1978. It does four things in one document.

First, it puts the tenant on notice of potential lead exposure through the federally mandated lead warning statement, the fixed language at 40 CFR 745.113(b)(1) that must be attached to or included within the lease.

Second, it transmits the lessor’s actual knowledge of lead-based paint or hazards in the dwelling. The lessor picks one of exactly two positions: known lead-based paint or hazards are present, with a description of what is known; or the lessor has no knowledge of lead-based paint or hazards in the housing. There is no third box, and there is no “maybe”.

Third, it transmits any reports the lessor holds from prior inspections, risk assessments, or hazard-reduction work. The lessor either provides copies of all available records and lists them, or affirmatively states that no reports or records exist.

Fourth, it documents the tenant’s receipt of the disclosure and of the EPA pamphlet. The signed acknowledgment is the landlord’s primary defence in any later EPA or HUD inquiry or private civil action.

The disclosure is not optional and the duty is not waivable by agreement. A pre-1978 Delaware rental leased without one exposes the landlord to government civil penalties and to a tenant’s private action for triple damages plus fees. Compliance takes fifteen minutes; non-compliance is the most expensive paperwork failure in pre-1978 rental practice.

Yes — and getting this right is the whole reason this page exists. Delaware is not one of the many states whose lead answer is simply “the duty is federal”. The General Assembly enacted 25 Del. C. Chapter 54, Lead-Based Paint Hazard Reduction, by 85 Del. Laws c. 98, approved 21 July 2025. It is codified. You can read Sections 5401 through 5413 in the Delaware Code today. It requires every rental unit constructed before 1 January 1978 to be certified lead free or lead safe by an approved lead inspector, with the certificate filed with the Department of Health and Social Services.

And yet it does not bind you today. Both halves of that sentence are true at once, and that is precisely what every other source on this topic fumbles. The chapter is enacted law that has not been implemented. If you read the chapter on the state’s own website, every operative section carries a bracketed editorial note — “[For implementation of this section, see 85 Del. Laws, c. 98, Section 5(2)]” — and the dates inside the sections are not dates at all. Section 5402 literally reads “Starting after the [implementation date under 85 Del. Laws, c. 98, Section 5(2)]”. The statute is a form with the date left blank.

To find the date, you have to leave the code entirely and read the uncodified session law. That is where the answer lives, and it is why so few pages have it right.

Section 5 of 85 Del. Laws c. 98 is the provision that controls everything. Here is what it actually says, from the enacted session law published by the state:

Read carefully, that provision decides four things.

The Act itself is already effective. “Effective immediately” as of 21 July 2025. What is deferred is implementation of the listed sections. This distinction is why you can read the chapter in the code and still owe nothing under it.

Only two things started immediately. Section 5410 — the feasibility committee — and Section 2612(d)(6) of Title 16. Everything a landlord would recognise as a duty is in the deferred bucket: the certification requirements at Sections 5402 and 5403, the certification disclosure at Section 5406, the educational-material duty at Section 5407, the new landlord obligation at Section 5305(a)(6), and the summary-possession documentation at Section 5704A.

The trigger is whichever comes first. Either the Delaware State Housing Authority’s Director publishes a notice in the Register of Regulations confirming that funding and final regulations are in place — and then you get twelve months’ grace — or the calendar simply reaches 1 March 2028, whichever happens sooner. Note what the notice route requires: not just regulations, but “all necessary legislation and appropriations”. The legislature built in an acknowledgment that the chapter needs money before it can bite.

The date is not carved in stone. Section 5(2) carries the words “unless otherwise provided by a subsequent act of the General Assembly”, and Section 5410 tasks a standing committee with reporting on feasibility and, if it thinks the deadlines are not achievable, proposing replacements — annually, on 1 January of each year through 1 January 2030. The 2028 backstop is a planning date, not a promise.