An agreement between two parties regarding the use of property, such as a personal property (car or boat) or real estate (store or apartment.) It may be oral or written and should cover essential items such as the start and termination date for the lease, the rent and any additional costs, how payments are to be made and any restrictions on the use of the property. The property owner or landlord is referred to as the lessor and the renting party is the lessee.
Law Dictionary – Alternative Legal Definition
A conveyance of lands or fene m ants to a person for life, for a term of years, or at will, in consideration of a return of rent or some other recompense. The person who so conveys such lands or tenements is termed the “lessor,” and the person to whom they are conveyed, the “lessee;” and when the lessor so conveys lands or tenements to a lessee, he is said to lease, demise, or let them. 4 Cruise, Dig. 58. A conveyance of any lands or tenements, (usually in consideration of rent or other annual recompense,) made for life, for years, or at will, but always for a less time than the tessor has in the premises; for, if it be for the whole interest, it is more properly an assignment than a lease. A contract in writing, under seal, whereby a person having a legal estate in hereditaments, corporeal or incorporeal, conveys a portion of his interest to another, in consideration of a certain annual rent or render, or other recompense. Archb. Landl. & Ten. 2. “Lease” or “hire” is a synallagmatic contract, to which consent alone is sufficient, and by which one party gives to the other the enjoyment of a thing, or his labor, at a fixed price. Civil Code La. art. 2669. When the contract is bipartite, the one part is called the “lease,” the other the “counterpart.” In the United States, it is usual that both papers should be executed by both. parties; but in England the lease is executed by the lessor alone, and given to the lessee, while the counterpart is executed by the lessee alone, and given to the lessor. Concurrent lease. One granted for a term which is to commence before the expiration or other determination of a previous lease of the same premises made to another person; or, in other words, an assignment of a part of the reversion, entitling the lessee to all the rents accruing on the previous lease after the date of his lease and to appropriate remedies against the holding tenant. Cargill v. Thompson, 57 Minn. 534, 59 N. W. 638. Lease and release. A species of conveyance much used in England, said to have been invented by Serjeant Moore, soon after the enactment of the statute of uses. It is thus contrived: A lease, or rather bargain and sale upon some pecuniary consideration for one year, is made by the tenant of the freehold to the lessee or bargainee. This without any enrolment, makes the bargainor stand seised to the use of the bargainee, and vests in the bargainee the use of the term for one year, and then the statute immediately annexes the possession. Being thus in possession, he is capable of receiving a release of the freehold and reversion, which must be made to the tenant in possession, and accordingly the next day a release is granted to him. The lease and release, when used as a conveyance of the fee, have the joint operation of a single conveyance. 2 Bl. Comm. 339; 4 Kent, Comm. 482; Co. Litt. 207; Cruise, Dig. tit 32, c. 11.Mining lease. See Mining. Parol lease. A lease of real estate not evidenced by writing, but resting in an oral agreement. Perpetual lease. A lease of lands which may last without limitation as to time; a grant of lands in fee with the reservation of a rent in fee; a fee farm. Edwards v. Noel, 88 Mo. App. 434. Sublease, or underlease. One executed by the lessee of an estate to a third person, conveving the same estate for a shorter term than that for which the lessee holds it.