Free Massachusetts Sublease Agreement

A sublease puts a new occupant into your unit while you stay on the lease and stay liable to the landlord. In Massachusetts, whether you may do that at all is a question for your lease: we read all of Chapter 186 and all of Chapter 239 — 61 sections — and neither contains a sublease or assignment provision. That makes the clause in your lease the operative rule, and it makes written consent the document that matters.

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Chapter 186 is the Massachusetts landlord-tenant chapter, and it is detailed about some things and silent about others. It regulates security deposits and last-month rent at § 15B, quiet enjoyment and utility interference at § 14, reprisal at § 18, and the notice required to end a tenancy at will at § 12. It says nothing at all about subletting or assignment — we checked every section, and then checked Chapter 239 as well. That absence is the finding: in Massachusetts the sublease question is contractual, and the lease clause is where the answer lives.

• The property address and unit, and whether the sublease covers the whole premises or a room.
• The names and contact details of the sublessor, the subtenant and the landlord.
• The master lease dates and the sublease dates, with the sublease ending no later.
• The clause number in the master lease that deals with subletting.
• The landlord’s written consent, attached where obtained.
• The rent payable to the sublessor, the due date and the payment method.
• The deposit amount, what it may be applied to and when it is returned.
• Utilities, furnishing, parking, smoking, pets and guests.
• An acknowledgement that the subtenant has received and read the master lease.
• Signature lines for sublessor, subtenant and landlord.

• Being quoted § 11A. It applies to premises “for other than dwelling purposes”. It is not the residential rule.
• Expecting a statutory reasonableness standard. Chapter 186 does not supply one for subletting; if your lease does not state a standard, there is none to import.
• Relying on a verbal yes. With no statute behind the obligation, the written record is the whole case.
• Confusing the nonpayment clock with a lease-breach clock. § 11’s fourteen days is about rent, not about breaching a covenant.
• Treating the two deposits as one. What the landlord holds from you and what you hold from your subtenant are different money under different agreements.
• Writing a sublease that outlasts the master lease. You cannot grant more than you hold.

No — and we checked rather than assumed. Chapter 186 of the General Laws is the landlord-tenant chapter; we read all of it, section by section, and then read Chapter 239 (summary process) as well. Across 61 sections, neither chapter contains a provision governing a residential tenant’s right to sublet or the standard for a landlord’s consent.

That absence is not a gap in our research; it is the answer. In Massachusetts the sublease question is contractual. Your lease decides whether you may sublet, whether consent is required, and whether any standard applies to refusing it. If your lease is silent on a point, there is no statutory default waiting behind it to fill the space.

Search Massachusetts lease law and you will meet c.186 § 11A, which reads like a general rule about terminating a lease and curing a default. It is not general. Its first line limits it:

“For other than dwelling purposes” means commercial. The section’s structure — termination either under the lease’s own provisions or, absent those, on fourteen days’ notice with a right to cure that applies only to the second route — is a commercial scheme. Applying it to an apartment is a category error, and a common one.

Neither § 11 nor § 12 answers that. § 11 is a nonpayment provision and § 12 is about tenancies at will. Breaching a covenant in a written lease — which is what subletting without required consent is — sits outside both.

What that leaves is the lease itself. A residential lease will normally contain a forfeiture or termination clause setting out what the landlord may do on breach and what notice is required, and that clause is what governs. Enforcement then runs through summary process under Chapter 239. The practical consequence for you is that the lease you are about to breach is also the document that defines the consequence, so reading it properly is not optional.

We are deliberately not putting a number of days on this. Massachusetts does not supply one for this situation, and inventing a figure that reads like statute would be worse than saying so.

Massachusetts regulates residential deposits more tightly than almost any other state, and the rule at the front of a tenancy was rewritten last year. Section 15B(1)(b), as amended by 2025, c.9, §§ 54 and 55, effective 1 August 2025, now reads:

Three items, and a deposit capped at one month’s rent. The 2025 act also created something new: the executive office of housing and livable communities may authorise a fee in lieu of a security deposit. Where it does, the statute requires that the fee be used to cover unpaid rent or damage, that it be disclosed in the lease as non-refundable and acknowledged in writing by the tenant, and that the total, whatever the length of the lease, not exceed one month’s rent.

Where the money has to sit

§ 15B(3)(a): a deposit “shall be held in a separate, interest-bearing account in a bank, located within the commonwealth, under such terms as will place such deposit beyond the claim of creditors of the lessor, including a foreclosing mortgagee or trustee in bankruptcy”. The tenant gets a receipt at the time of payment naming the amount, who received it, the date and the premises — and a further receipt within thirty days giving the bank’s name and location and the account number.

The penalties are why landlords take this seriously. Failing to pay interest owed within thirty days of the tenancy ending exposes the lessor to three times that interest plus costs and fees, and a breach of the return provisions at subsection (6)(a), (d) or (e) carries three times the deposit plus five per cent interest, costs and attorney’s fees.

And keep the two relationships separate in your own accounting. You owe the landlord under the master lease; the subtenant owes you under the sublease. A late-paying subtenant changes nothing about what you owe — which is the strongest argument for screening one as carefully as any landlord would, with a completed rental application and written consent to screening.

Two documents prevent most later arguments: a written condition record made together and backed with dated photographs, and a proper application with consent to screening. Because you occupy the landlord’s role in this relationship, the ordinary landlord discipline applies to you — verify, document, and keep the file. If the sublease goes wrong, the owner will not distinguish between your subtenant’s conduct and your own.

Because Massachusetts leaves subletting to the lease, the statutory material that is worth knowing is the notice scheme around ending a tenancy — the machinery that a subletting dispute eventually runs into.

§ 12 — ending a tenancy at will

“Estates at will may be determined by either party by three months’ notice in writing for that purpose given to the other party; and, if the rent reserved is payable at periods of less than three months, the time of such notice shall be sufficient if it is equal to the interval between the days of payment or thirty days, whichever is longer.”

For a monthly tenancy at will, that produces a rent-interval-or-thirty-days test rather than a flat thirty days — the statute takes whichever is longer. The section also allows the notice to include an offer of a new tenancy on different terms without that offer affecting the notice’s validity, which is how a lawful rent increase is usually structured for a tenant at will.

§ 12 for nonpayment, and the paragraph that must appear

For nonpayment by a tenant at will the notice is fourteen days. But the tenancy is preserved if the tenant, “within ten days after the receipt thereof”, pays or tenders the full amount of rent due — provided the tenant “has not received a similar notice from the landlord within the twelve months next preceding”.

And the statute prescribes wording. Every notice to determine an estate at will for nonpayment “shall contain the following notification to the tenant”:

A notice that omits it is not void, but the consequence is real: the time within which the tenant may pay “shall be extended to the day the answer is due” in the landlord’s action for possession.

§ 11 — nonpayment under a written lease

Fourteen days’ notice to quit determines the lease, “unless the tenant, on or before the day the answer is due, in an action by the landlord to recover possession of the premises, pays or tenders to the landlord or to his attorney all rent then due, with interest and costs of suit.” The cure is available right up to the answer date, and it must cover interest and costs, not just the rent.

Read those provisions together and the shape of Massachusetts law becomes clear. § 11 is about rent under a written lease. § 12 is about tenancies at will. § 11A is about commercial premises. There is no section about breaching a covenant in a residential lease, and there is no section about subletting.

So a landlord responding to an unauthorised sublease is working from the lease’s own forfeiture or termination provision and then bringing summary process under Chapter 239. That places unusual weight on what your particular lease says: the clause defines both the obligation you are breaching and the consequence of breaching it.

Sales happen mid-tenancy, and Massachusetts writes the deposit consequence into the statute rather than leaving it to the parties. Under § 15B, where a lessor holding a security deposit transfers their interest — “whether by sale, assignment, death, appointment of a receiver or trustee in bankruptcy, or otherwise” — the deposit and any accrued interest transfer with it, and the successor becomes liable for holding and returning it from the date of the transfer. Granting a mortgage on the premises is expressly not a transfer of interest for this purpose.

The new owner then acquires a duty with a clock on it: “The successor in interest shall, within forty-five days from the date of said transfer, notify the tenant who made such security deposit that such security deposit was transferred to him and that he is holding said security deposit.” The same forty-five-day notification applies to last-month rent paid in advance.

That matters twice over in a sublease. Your own deposit with the owner follows the building, so a sale does not put it out of reach, and the notice you should receive is a dated record of who holds it now. But the deposit you hold from your subtenant sits under the sublease, not the master lease, and none of this reaches it — so say in the sublease what happens to your subtenant’s money if your own tenancy ends or is assigned.

Yes — and the point people miss is that you are the landlord in that relationship, so you use the same machinery a landlord would use against you. You cannot change the locks, remove the subtenant’s belongings, or shut off utilities. What you do is serve the notice the situation calls for and, if the subtenant does not leave, bring summary process under Chapter 239 in the appropriate court.

Which notice depends on what the sublease created. If you granted a fixed sublease term in writing and the subtenant has not paid, § 11’s fourteen-day framework is the shape of it, with the cure available up to the answer date on payment of everything due with interest and costs. If what you created is closer to a tenancy at will — no fixed end date, rent paid monthly — then § 12 governs, with its three-months-or-the-rent-interval-or-thirty-days test and, for nonpayment, the fourteen-day notice carrying that mandatory notification paragraph.

Two constraints are worth stating plainly. First, your own tenancy is the ceiling on theirs: if the master lease ends, the sublease ends with it, because you cannot grant more than you hold. Second, ending the sublease does nothing about your own position with the owner — if the sublease was unauthorised in the first place, removing the subtenant does not by itself repair the breach of your lease.

This is also the practical reason to put a clear end date in the sublease rather than letting it run indefinitely. A defined term that sits inside your own is far easier to bring to a close than an open-ended arrangement that has quietly become something else.

One further Massachusetts nuance is worth flagging. Because § 12’s notice period is measured as the interval between rent days or thirty days, whichever is longer, a sublease where rent is paid weekly does not get a shorter notice than a monthly one — the thirty-day floor holds. Tenants and sublessors alike often assume the opposite, and plan a handover date that turns out to be too soon.

A sublease rarely arrives on its own. Most people reach one because something else has changed — a job in another city, a relationship ending, a lease with months left on it — so it is worth knowing what the alternatives cost before you commit to this one. Our guide to breaking a lease in Massachusetts sets out the early-exit routes and what each of them exposes you to, and in some situations ending the tenancy outright is cleaner than running a sublease you will have to manage from a distance.

The two disputes that actually follow a sublease are about money and about possession. On money, the deposit is where most of it happens, and the rules that govern what a landlord may take and when it has to come back are set out in Massachusetts security deposit laws — worth reading before you decide what to hold from your subtenant, and before you assume you know what the owner may hold from you.

On possession, the notices and timelines that apply if things go wrong are covered in Massachusetts eviction notice laws. You are the landlord in the sublease relationship, so those rules are as likely to be yours to use as to be used against you.

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