Free Alaska Sublease Agreement

A sublease puts another person in your Alaska rental while your own name stays on the rental agreement and your own obligations stay where they are. In most states the next paragraph would tell you to go and read your lease. In Alaska the statute goes considerably further than that: AS 34.03.060 prescribes what the applicant must submit, caps the reasons a landlord may give for refusing, and puts a fourteen-day clock on the answer.

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It gives you a decision, on a deadline, measured against a fixed list. That is a great deal more than most states supply, and it is worth using rather than working around. What the section does not do is release you: AS 34.03.060 says nothing about the original tenant’s continuing liability in either direction, so a consent is a permission and not a substitution. The section also states no penalty of its own for subletting without consent — that consequence arrives through the general breach provision, AS 34.03.220. And the section draws no line between fixed-term and periodic tenancies: it speaks of “the rental agreement” generally, with no separate rule for month-to-month subletting.

• The full address of the unit and the names of the original tenant and the subtenant, matching the names on the original rental agreement.
• The exact start and end dates of the sublease, ending on or before the last day of your own term.
• The rent, the due date, who it is paid to and by what method — the money chain is what most sublease disputes turn on.
• The deposit: whether one is taken, who holds it, and the conditions for returning it.
• The consent position: whether the landlord’s written consent was obtained, was requested and is awaiting an answer, or was not required by the original rental agreement — with the date.
• Where consent arose from the conclusive presumption in AS 34.03.060(f) rather than from a signed consent, say so in your own words in the agreement or an attached note, and keep the dated AS 34.03.060(c) offer and its proof of delivery with your copy. Those documents live outside the sublease and are what establish the presumption.
• An acknowledgment that the original tenant remains answerable to the landlord under the original rental agreement, since nothing in AS 34.03.060 releases the tenant.
• Which obligations of the original rental agreement the subtenant is taking on, stated item by item rather than by cross-reference.
• Utilities, heat and fuel, parking, storage, and any furnishings left in the unit.
• What happens if your own tenancy ends early, including on a notice to quit, and how the subtenant is told — because AS 34.03.220(f) leaves that subtenant with no rights of their own under the chapter.
• Signatures and dates from both parties, plus the landlord’s written consent where one was given.

• Asking for permission in the abstract. AS 34.03.060(c) is built around a named prospective occupant delivering a signed written offer. A vague request to “sublet at some point” starts no clock, because nothing has been delivered for the fourteen days to run from.
• Letting the applicant leave items out of the offer. Subsection (c) lists six categories of information the written offer must contain. An offer missing the three years of prior landlords, or the two credit references, is not the document the statute describes.
• Sending the offer in a way you cannot later date. Both the (d) rejection window and the (f) presumption are measured from delivery of the written offer. The delivery date is the single most important fact in the whole process.
• Accepting a refusal that names no listed ground. Subsection (e) is explicit: where the written rejection fails to contain one or more grounds permitted by (d), the tenant may consider consent given, or may terminate the rental agreement on written notice at least thirty days before the termination date named in it.
• Assuming a lease clause can add a reason. Subsection (b) says consent may be withheld only on the (d) grounds and that “no further restrictions on sublease or assignment are enforceable.” A refusal reason invented outside the list does not become one by being written down first.
• Treating consent as a release. Nothing in AS 34.03.060 relieves the original tenant of anything. Your landlord permitting the sublease is not your landlord letting you go, and rent that does not arrive still reaches you.
• Moving someone in first and papering it afterwards. An unauthorized sublet is material noncompliance with the rental agreement, and AS 34.03.220(c) lets the landlord recover actual damages and obtain injunctive relief for noncompliance.
• Assuming the subtenant has protections of their own. AS 34.03.220(f) provides that a person whose use of the premises is based solely on rights acquired by a tenant, and who has not individually acquired the rights of a tenant, does not acquire rights under the chapter by being present on the premises.

By default, yes — but the permission comes with strings attached to the landlord rather than to you. Alaska’s residential landlord-tenant act is AS 34.03, and it contains a section written for exactly this question: AS 34.03.060, captioned “Sublease and assignment.” It has six subsections and every one of them does work.

Subsection (a) states the default rule in a single line: “unless otherwise agreed in writing, the tenant may not sublet the premises or assign the rental agreement to another without the landlord’s consent.” Two things are worth noticing already. The rule covers assignment as well as sublease, which many lease clauses treat as one idea and the statute treats as two. And the default is moveable — the opening words contemplate a written agreement saying something else.

Then subsection (b) does something most states never attempt. It provides that the tenant’s right to sublease the premises or assign the rental agreement “shall be conditioned on obtaining the landlord’s consent, which may be withheld only upon the grounds specified in (d) of this section; no further restrictions on sublease or assignment are enforceable.” The consent power exists, and then it is immediately bounded. There is a list, the list is in (d), and the statute closes the door behind it.

Alaska does not leave the application to custom or to whatever form the landlord happens to use. Subsection (c) prescribes it. Where the rental agreement requires the landlord’s consent for sublease or assignment, “the tenant may secure one or more persons who are willing to occupy the premises. Each prospective occupant shall make a written offer signed and delivered by the prospective occupant to the landlord,” containing the following information on the prospective occupant:

(1) name, age, and present address; (2) marital status; (3) occupation, place of employment, and name and address of employer; (4) number of all other persons who would normally reside with the prospective occupant; (5) two credit references, or responsible persons who will confirm the financial responsibility of the prospective occupant; and (6) names and addresses of all landlords of the prospective occupant during the prior three years.

Three practical consequences follow from the wording. First, the offer is made, signed and delivered by the prospective occupant, not by you on their behalf — the statute puts the applicant’s own signature on the document. Second, the statute contemplates more than one candidate: the tenant “may secure one or more persons,” and each of them makes an offer. Third, the six items are not a suggested outline. They are what the offer is required to contain, and a landlord faced with an incomplete offer has an obvious argument that the document which starts the clock has not yet been delivered.

The information in that offer is, not coincidentally, the information a landlord would gather in an ordinary screening. The difference is that here the categories come from the statute rather than from the landlord’s preferences — and the offer is a separate document from the sublease itself. Draft it, date it, and keep a copy; the sublease agreement records the deal, not the application that preceded it.