The hard part is not that someone is leaving. People leave shared flats all the time: a job in another city, a breakup, a couple splitting, one person buying their own place. The hard part is the paper. You and the other person are not two separate renters who each owe half. You are two signatures on one promise, and Israeli leases are written so that promise binds each of you for the whole thing. So when your roommate hands back their key and walks, the lease does not walk with them. Their name is still on it, their share of the deposit is still locked in the landlord’s drawer, and if they stop paying, the landlord is fully entitled to turn to you for every shekel. This page is about untangling that cleanly: getting a name off, getting a replacement on, and dividing the money so you are not quietly paying for the person who left.
This is written for the one who is staying, or for the couple where one of you is going. It assumes you share a single lease. If instead you each signed your own separate contract for your own room, most of this does not apply to you, because you were never tied to each other in the first place. For the contract that governs all of this, the master document is the lease contract checklist.
Read the one phrase that decides everything
Before anything else, find two Hebrew words in your lease: yachad ve-lehud (jointly and severally). Almost every shared Israeli lease contains them, usually in the clause naming the tenants.
Here is what they do. “Jointly” means you all owe the obligation together. “Severally” means each of you also owes the whole obligation alone. Under Israel’s Contracts Law (General Part) of 1973, two people who owe one obligation are presumed to owe it this way unless the contract says otherwise (section 54), and the creditor (your landlord) may demand the whole debt, or any part of it, from both of you together or from each of you separately, as long as they do not collect more than the total owed (section 55). The landlord picks who to chase. Usually that is whoever is easiest to reach: the one still living there, the one whose bank guarantee is on file, the one with a local guarantor.
So the popular belief, “I only pay my half,” is wrong on a joint lease. You owe your half to your roommate. You owe the whole rent to the landlord. That single distinction is the engine behind every number on this page.
Your three real moves
When one tenant leaves a shared lease mid-term, only three outcomes actually fix it, and they are not equal.
- Remove the leaver’s name and replace them with a new tenant who signs onto the same lease. This is the clean one: it ends the leaver’s liability and starts the new person’s. It needs the landlord’s written sign-off, but the law makes an unreasonable refusal hard to enforce for an apartment.
- Remove the name with no replacement, leaving fewer people on the same rent. The landlord rarely agrees, because it weakens their security, and the remaining tenants must absorb the leaver’s share.
- Do nothing formal. The leaver moves out but stays on the lease. This feels easy and is the most dangerous, because their name, and yours, both stay fully on the hook until the lease ends.
The rest of this page works through each, the money behind them, and the two life events (divorce and death) that force the question whether you planned for it or not.
Taking a name off: the law is friendlier than you fear
Lead with the surprise, because it runs against what most renters assume. The common fear is “the landlord can just say no.” For an apartment, that is not how the statute reads.
Replacing a tenant on the lease runs through section 22 of the Hire and Loan Law of 1971. The rule has three layers, and the third is the one nobody expects:
- The starting point: a tenant may not transfer the right to hold and use the property, or pass on their lease obligations, or sublet, without the landlord’s consent.
- The twist: if the landlord refuses for unreasonable reasons, or sets unreasonable conditions on agreeing, then for a real-property lease (an apartment) the tenant may go ahead without the landlord’s consent. In any lease, a court may also authorise the change on terms it sees fit.
- The form: for an apartment, the landlord’s consent must be given in advance and in writing.
Read together, this means a landlord cannot simply block a perfectly good replacement out of spite. If the new person has income, references and the same paperwork the landlord asked of you, refusing them is the kind of unreasonable refusal the law does not protect. You should still aim for written consent every time, because a fight over what counts as “unreasonable” is a fight you do not want. But you are not as powerless as the lease tone suggests.
There is one more protection working in your favour. A landlord who loses a paying tenant has a duty to reduce their own loss (to mitigate): they must make reasonable efforts to re-let or to accept a reasonable replacement, rather than sit on an empty room and bill the leaver forever. A penalty far larger than the landlord’s real damage is not enforceable. This is what stops the leaver, or you, from being charged months of phantom rent when a willing replacement was standing right there.
Replacement versus just-leaving: what each does to liability
The single biggest decision is whether the leaver is replaced or merely gone. They sound similar. They are opposites for who owes what.
A replacement tenant (a dayar chalifi) signs onto the head lease and takes the leaver’s place. Once the landlord accepts them in writing, the leaver’s future liability ends and the new person’s begins. This is different from a sublet, where the leaver stays on the lease and a sub-tenant occupies behind them; landlords generally prefer a clean replacement precisely because it binds the new person directly. If a sublet is what you are weighing instead, the mechanics and the trap (the original tenant stays fully liable) live on the subletting rules page, and leaving the lease entirely is covered by the early-exit clause.
| What happens to the leaver | Are they replaced? | Leaver’s future liability | Stayer’s exposure | Landlord consent |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| New tenant signs onto the lease | Yes (replacement) | Ends at handover to the new tenant | Shared with the new tenant going forward | Written, in advance; unreasonable refusal not protected for an apartment |
| Name removed, no one added | No | Ends only if the landlord agrees to release them | Rises: fewer people, same rent | Landlord rarely agrees; weakens their security |
| Sub-tenant occupies, leaver stays on lease | No (sublet) | Stays in full; leaver answers for the sub-tenant | Unchanged on paper | Needed; see subletting rules |
| Leaver just moves out, nothing signed | No | Stays in full until the lease ends | Stayer can still be billed for the whole rent | None sought; worst outcome for everyone |
The lesson of the table is blunt: only a signed replacement (or a formal landlord release) actually frees the leaver. Everything else keeps both names on the hook.
Scenario one: the roommate who stops paying
This is the situation that turns joint-and-several liability from a phrase into a bill. Here is a worked figure, built from the shared rent data, with every step shown.
The setup. Three friends, Dana, Eitan and Noa, share a flat on one joint lease at the national average rent of NIS 5,027 a month (CBS, Q1 2026). Between themselves they agreed to split it in equal thirds, so each pays NIS 1,676 a month. Noa loses her job, stops paying, and moves out with four months left on the lease. Nothing is signed; her name stays on the lease.
What the landlord may do. The rent due each month is still NIS 5,027. Noa has paid nothing. Under section 55 the landlord can demand the full NIS 5,027 from Dana and Eitan, in any split, because they are jointly and severally liable. The landlord is not obliged to track Noa down. If Dana and Eitan keep splitting only their own two thirds, they pay NIS 1,676 each and the rent comes up NIS 1,676 short, which is a default that risks the whole tenancy. To keep the roof, the two of them must cover Noa’s missing third.
| Item | Amount | How it is worked |
|---|---|---|
| Full monthly rent | NIS 5,027 | National average, CBS Q1 2026 (fact bank) |
| Each person’s agreed share (3 ways) | NIS 1,676 | 5,027 / 3 |
| Noa’s unpaid share, per month | NIS 1,676 | the missing third |
| Extra each remaining roommate must now cover | NIS 838 / month | 1,676 / 2 remaining payers |
| Over the 4 months left | NIS 3,353 each | 838 x 4 |
| Total the two cover for the leaver | NIS 6,705 | 1,676 x 4 |
What you can recover, and how. The law does not leave Dana and Eitan stuck. Section 56 says co-debtors carry the burden in equal shares between themselves, and whoever pays more than their own share has a right of recovery (a right of contribution) against the others. So Dana and Eitan can sue Noa for the NIS 6,705 they covered on her behalf. The catch is real, though: they have to find her, sue her, and hope she can pay, while the landlord already has their money. The landlord’s risk became their risk the moment they covered the gap. That is the whole point of joint-and-several liability, and the reason the next sections matter so much.
One more safety note. If the landlord later releases or settles with one debtor, that can release the others to the same extent (section 55(c)). So if the landlord cuts a side deal with Noa, Dana and Eitan should get any release in writing too, or it may cut against them.
Scenario two: splitting the deposit when one of you leaves early
The deposit is the second place this gets messy, because of one fact people miss: the landlord holds one deposit for the whole apartment, not a separate deposit per room. The landlord is not obliged to refund a leaving roommate’s “share” in the middle of the lease. They reconcile the deposit once, at the very end, against the state of the flat and any debts. So the leaver cannot get their money out of the landlord mid-lease. The money has to move between the tenants.
Here is the second worked figure.
The setup. Same three-person flat, rent NIS 5,027. On a 12-month lease the deposit is capped by the Fair Rental Law at three months’ rent (the lower of three months or one-third of the total; on any lease of nine months or more, three months binds). That is 3 x 5,027 = NIS 15,081 held by the landlord. The three split it equally going in, so each contributed NIS 5,027. Now Noa leaves early and a new roommate, Yael, is moving in to replace her.
| Item | Amount | Basis |
|---|---|---|
| Total deposit held by landlord | NIS 15,081 | 3 x 5,027 (Fair Rental cap, fact bank) |
| Each tenant’s share going in | NIS 5,027 | 15,081 / 3 |
| What the landlord refunds Noa mid-lease | NIS 0 | deposit is for the whole flat; reconciled only at lease end |
| Buyout Yael pays Noa directly | NIS 5,027 | Yael steps into Noa’s deposit share |
| Deposit instrument with the landlord | unchanged at NIS 15,081 | nothing returned or re-lodged; names on the lease change |
The clean fix: a private buyout. The incoming roommate buys out the leaving roommate’s deposit share. Yael pays Noa NIS 5,027 directly, Noa walks away square, and the NIS 15,081 the landlord holds never moves. On paper the only change is the swap of names on the lease (with landlord consent). When the lease finally ends, the landlord reconciles the whole NIS 15,081 against the people on the lease at that point, which now includes Yael, not Noa.
If there is no replacement, the two staying roommates buy out the leaver between them: Dana and Eitan each pay Noa half of her NIS 5,027 share, NIS 2,514 each, and they then hold a larger slice of the same deposit at the end. Either way, the rule is the same: the leaver gets paid out by the people staying or arriving, never by the landlord mid-lease.
If the deposit is a bank guarantee rather than cash, it gets stickier. A bank guarantee is usually in one roommate’s name, freezing that person’s own money as collateral. If that person is the one leaving, swapping roommates normally means re-issuing the guarantee in a new name, which carries a fresh fee (a reformed fixed fee of roughly NIS 250 to 410 for a deposit-backed guarantee). The full mechanics of each instrument, and which one is best to give in the first place, are on the deposits and guarantees page and, for the guarantee specifically, the rental bank guarantee page. The deduction and 60-day return rules at the end of the lease are owned there too, so this page does not repeat them.
These two figures are arithmetic from the fact-bank rent and the legal cap. They are illustrative, not official, and your real rent and split will differ; the basis is shown so you can redo them with your own numbers.
Divorce, death, and who keeps the lease
Two life events force the co-tenant question without warning. Both turn on the same machinery you have just read.
Divorce. A rented apartment is not owned by the couple, so it is not divided like marital property. There is nothing to split. What decides who stays is simpler and harsher: whose name is on the lease, and whether the landlord agrees to take the other name off. That removal runs through section 22, exactly like any other replacement or release. Until a name is formally removed, both spouses remain jointly and severally liable for the rent, even after one has moved out. So a spouse who leaves the home but stays on the lease can still be billed for the full rent if the one who stayed defaults. The practical step is the same as scenario one: get a written landlord release for the leaving spouse, or replace them, rather than relying on the move-out alone.
Death of an ordinary (free-market) tenant. The lease does not automatically end when a tenant dies. It continues, and the deceased’s obligations pass to their estate until it is wound up. A co-tenant or spouse who is also on the same lease stays bound under joint-and-several liability, so the survivor can face the full rent while the estate is sorted out. This is a free-market lease outcome; it is not the same as the old protected-tenancy rules.
Death under a protected tenancy. This is a narrow, mostly legacy regime, and it works differently: protected-tenancy rights can pass to the spouse if they lived together for at least six months before the death, then to children who lived with the tenant for at least six months and have no other home, then to other relatives on the same conditions. Most modern rentals are ordinary free-market leases, so treat this as the exception. If your situation actually involves key money or a unit governed by the 1972 law, the rules are owned on the protected tenancy and key money page, not here.
A short walk through doing it right
From the whole decision down to the smallest signature, here is the order that protects you.
- Confirm the lease is joint, by finding yachad ve-lehud (or its English equivalent) in the tenants clause. If it is there, the whole-rent exposure below is real for you.
- Decide the route: replace the leaver, get them formally released, or (worst) do nothing. Aim for replacement.
- Line up the replacement with the same paperwork the landlord required of you, so a refusal would be unreasonable. The standard document set is on rental documents needed.
- Get the landlord’s consent in writing and in advance, as section 22 requires for an apartment. A verbal yes is worth nothing in a dispute.
- Sign a short amendment (nispach) to the lease that names the new tenant, removes the leaver, and states the date the swap takes effect.
- Settle the deposit privately: the new (or staying) roommate buys out the leaver’s share directly. If it is a bank guarantee, arrange the re-issue before the leaver goes.
- Re-do the condition record: note meter readings and the flat’s state at the swap, so the leaver is not blamed for later damage and the new person inherits a fair baseline. The handover routine is on the move checklist.
- Keep every signature. The signed amendment and the landlord’s written consent are what end the leaver’s liability. Without them, both names stay on the lease.
The few terms worth pinning down
- Yachad ve-lehud (jointly and severally): each tenant owes the whole obligation, not just a share, so the landlord can collect 100% from any one of you.
- Right of recovery / contribution: if you pay more than your share, you can sue the others for the difference between you.
- Dayar chalifi (replacement tenant): a new person who signs onto the lease and takes the leaver’s place, ending the leaver’s future liability.
- Section 22: the Hire and Loan Law rule on transferring a tenancy; for an apartment, an unreasonable landlord refusal does not block a replacement.
- Duty to mitigate: the landlord must take reasonable steps to re-let or accept a reasonable replacement rather than charge endless empty-room rent.
- Nispach: a signed addendum to the lease, here used to record the name change.
Before anyone moves out, run this check
- You have confirmed whether the lease is joint and several. If it is, you know you can be billed for the whole rent, not your share.
- You have decided to replace the leaver or to get a written landlord release, not just let them move out.
- You have the landlord’s written, advance consent to the name change.
- A signed lease amendment names the new tenant, removes the leaver, and dates the swap.
- The deposit share has been bought out privately, in writing, between the tenants.
- If the deposit is a bank guarantee, the re-issue is arranged before the leaver leaves.
- You have a written record of the flat’s condition and meter readings at the swap.
- You have accepted that, until those signatures exist, both names stay fully on the hook.
Questions co-tenants actually ask
My roommate moved out but is still on the lease. Am I safe if they keep paying?
Only while they keep paying. Because the lease is joint and several, the day they stop, the landlord can bill you for the full rent, including their share. The safe move is a formal replacement or a written landlord release, not an informal “they will keep sending their part.”
Can the landlord really make me pay my roommate’s share?
Yes, on a joint lease. Under section 55 the landlord may demand the whole rent from any one tenant. They do not have to chase the person who left. You pay, then you pursue the leaver yourself for contribution under section 56.
The landlord is refusing my replacement for no real reason. Am I stuck?
For an apartment, probably not. Section 22 says that if the landlord refuses on unreasonable grounds, the tenant may proceed without consent, and a court can approve the change. Still get advice and aim for written consent, because the fight is over what counts as “unreasonable.”
How do I get my deposit share back if I am the one leaving?
Not from the landlord, not mid-lease. The landlord holds one deposit for the whole flat and reconciles it only at the end. You get paid out privately: the incoming roommate (or the ones staying) buy out your share directly. Agree the figure in writing before you hand back your key.
We are divorcing and renting. Who keeps the apartment?
Whoever stays on the lease, with the landlord’s agreement to remove the other name. A rented home is not marital property to be split, so there is nothing to divide; it comes down to the lease and a section 22 removal. Until a name is formally taken off, both of you remain liable for the rent.
My co-tenant died. Does the lease end?
Not automatically on an ordinary lease. It continues, the estate inherits the obligations, and a surviving co-tenant on the same lease stays liable. The separate, narrow protected-tenancy rules (spouse or children who lived in for at least six months) only apply to old key-money units, covered on the protected tenancy page.
Is a sublet a way to get my name off?
No. In a sublet your name stays on the lease and you stay liable for the sub-tenant. Only a replacement who signs the lease, or a written release, takes your name off. See the subletting rules page for that route.
Where these facts come from
- Contracts Law (General Part), 5733-1973, sections 54 to 56 (joint and several liability; right of contribution), Nevo statutory text
- Hire and Loan Law (Sechirut ve-Sheila), 5731-1971, section 22 (transfer and replacement of a tenancy; unreasonable refusal), Nevo statutory text
- Tenant Protection Law (Consolidated Version), 5732-1972 (protected-tenancy succession on death), Nevo statutory text
- House In Israel, alternate tenant or sub-tenant guide
- Menora Law, lease agreement in Israel guide (section 22 and replacement)
- Global Property Guide, Israel landlord and tenant (duty to mitigate)
- Kol Zchut, cash deposit as security and the security cap (Rental and Loan Law sec. 25yod)
- Nefesh B’Nefesh, Renting in Israel guide (deposit cap, 60-day return, security instruments)
- Israel Central Bureau of Statistics, national average rent Q1 2026 (NIS 5,027), via Ynetnews
Your next step: open your lease, find yachad ve-lehud, and decide today whether the leaver is being replaced or formally released, because until one of those is signed both names stay liable. Line up the replacement’s paperwork, ask the landlord for written consent, and settle the deposit buyout privately on the same day the names change. For the contract clauses that govern the whole thing, work from the lease contract checklist; for the deposit mechanics at the end of the lease, see deposits and guarantees; and the full set of renting guides lives on the renting in Israel hub.
