How does a Mississippi landlord lawfully end a tenancy, and when may a tenant leave early?

Which body of law governs a Mississippi tenancy depends on when the agreement was made. Chapter 89-8, the Residential Landlord and Tenant Act, governs every dwelling agreement entered into after July 1, 1991, and supplies the 30-day and seven-day notice periods, the double-rent holdover rule and the cosigner rule below. A residential agreement entered on or before July 1, 1991 is still governed by chapter 89-7, whose figure for a monthly holding is one week, not 30 days, with two months for a year-to-year holding and one month for a half-year or quarter-year holding. Two further dates matter inside chapter 89-8: the cosigner termination right reaches only leases entered into or renewed on or after July 1, 2011, and the narrowed definition of tenant that puts trespassers outside the act took effect July 1, 2025.

Look at the date the rental agreement was entered into. After July 1, 1991 and the residential act governs; on or before that date and the general landlord-and-tenant chapter still does, with much shorter notice periods. For the cosigner rule, look instead at whether the lease was entered into or renewed on or after July 1, 2011. And for a person who moved in without the landlord's knowledge or permission at any time, the residential act since July 1, 2025 says that person is not a tenant, so its notice periods do not run in that person's favor and a separate removal procedure applies.

The switch changes: every answer on this page.

Landlord: 30 days. Tenant: 30 days.

The party ending the tenancy names the termination date in the written notice, and the notice must be given at least 30 days before that date for a month-to-month tenancy or at least seven days before it for a week-to-week tenancy. The count therefore runs forward from the giving of the notice to a date the notice itself fixes. Nothing ties that date to a rent-due date, to a periodic rental date or to the end of a rental period; those phrases appear nowhere in the residential act, so on the face of the statute the tenancy may be set to end on any day of the month. The pre-1991 chapter counts differently, by whole periods, which is one reason the two bodies of law are kept apart here.

The termination date may fall on any day.

Tiers: Two tracks, set by how the tenant pays. Where the agreement fixes no definite term, the tenancy is week to week for a tenant who pays weekly rent and month to month in every other case; a week-to-week tenancy takes seven days' notice and a month-to-month tenancy 30. Above those two tracks sits a complete exception rather than a third tier: no termination notice at all is required where the landlord or the tenant has committed a substantial violation of the rental agreement or of the act that materially affects health or safety. No period turns on how long the tenant has lived there, on the tenant's age or disability, on the building, on a subsidy, on the size of the landlord's holdings or on any county or city.

A lease may not change the period. The bar is chapter-wide and runs both ways: in any agreement, oral or written, for the rental of real property as a dwelling place, a landlord or tenant may not agree to waive or otherwise forgo any of the rights, duties or remedies under the act, except as the act itself provides (section 89-8-5). The notice section carries no clause letting the parties agree a different period, so the anti-waiver rule reaches it and neither side can be held to a shorter or longer period by the lease. Note the qualifier at the end of the anti-waiver sentence, which matters elsewhere in this record: where the act itself says a rule yields to the rental agreement, as the holdover double-rent section does, the parties may contract around that rule. No Mississippi appellate decision has applied the anti-waiver section to a lease-altered termination notice.

A statute requires the landlord's and tenant's periods to be equal, or bars a lease from imposing a longer period on one side.

Source of the period: a termination-notice statute states it.

Either the landlord or the tenant may end a month-to-month tenancy by written notice given to the other at least 30 days before the termination date, and a week-to-week tenancy by written notice given at least seven days before it; the same sentence grants the right to both sides, so the periods are identical in both directions (section 89-8-19, subsections 2 and 3). Where the rental agreement fixes no definite term, the tenancy is week to week for a tenant who pays weekly rent and month to month in every other case. No reason need be given. One exception cancels the notice entirely and it is easy to miss because it sits inside the notice section: notice to terminate is not required where the landlord or the tenant has committed a substantial violation of the rental agreement or of the act that materially affects health or safety (section 89-8-19, subsection 4). Because it names both sides, it is as much a tenant's exit from an unsafe unit as a landlord's route against a dangerous tenant. Notice given to the landlord's agent counts as notice to the landlord (section 89-8-7, subsection 2). For a residential agreement entered on or before July 1, 1991 the older chapter still governs and its figures are much shorter: one week for a monthly or weekly holding, one month for a half-year or quarter-year holding and two months for a year-to-year holding, with notice needed only where the term is not to expire at a fixed time.

No: no statewide rule requires a reason, and no statute expressly authorizes local ordinances.

Local ordinances: no statute or decision addresses them. Neither Mississippi landlord-tenant chapter says anything about local just-cause or eviction-control ordinances: neither authorizes one and neither forbids one. The word preempt appears in neither chapter, and the only references to local government are the definition of building and housing codes and a provision letting a county, municipality or housing authority contract with tenant-management organizations, which is not a power to regulate tenancies. Whether Mississippi's general municipal home-rule grant, which sits in a different title, would leave room for such an ordinance is untested. What a Mississippi locality may do about the amount of rent is a separate question answered on the rent-increase page.

No reason is required to end a periodic tenancy or to let a fixed term expire in Mississippi. Nothing in either landlord-tenant chapter conditions a termination or a non-renewal on a ground, and the general chapter says the opposite in terms, that notice to quit is necessary only where the term is not to expire at a fixed time. The residential act lists exactly two grounds on which a landlord may start eviction proceedings: breach of the rental agreement or violation of the act, and failing to vacate after the termination or expiration of the agreement (section 89-8-31). The second of those is the point for this page, and the words 'the termination or' were added in 2025, so Mississippi has recently made a no-cause termination a more explicit basis for an eviction filing rather than a restricted one. Mississippi has no relocation payment, no protected-tenant class and no sunset.

The term ends on its date; no statute requires notice from either side.

After the term, nothing converts: a holdover creates no new tenancy. A Mississippi holdover does not become a periodic tenant and does not renew the lease. No section of either chapter converts an expired fixed term into a periodic tenancy, by acceptance of rent or otherwise: the residential act creates a month-to-month or week-to-week tenancy only where the agreement fixes no definite term in the first place, which does not reach a term that has run out. What the statute does instead is treat the person still in possession as a holdover whom the landlord may proceed against, and failing to vacate after the expiration of the agreement is an express eviction ground. The common law does not fill the gap either: the Supreme Court of Mississippi held in 1984 that the common-law rule of implied renewal had been abrogated once and for all and could no longer be used to impose the renewal of an expired lease, and the Court of Appeals restated that in 2000. No statute has restored it.

A rental agreement that fixes a definite term expires on the date stated in the agreement (section 89-8-17, subsection 1). Neither side owes any notice of non-renewal, and Mississippi has no statute requiring a reminder before an automatic-renewal clause takes effect. A tenant who stays on does not become a month-to-month tenant and does not renew the lease; the person is a holdover. At any time after the expiration the landlord may give written notice, or notice by email or text message where the tenant has agreed to be notified that way, saying that the tenant is holding over and that eviction proceedings will begin no earlier than three days after the notice. The landlord may also demand an increase in rent after the expiration, provided the demand was not dominantly aimed at retaliating for something the tenant did under the act and the landlord had written notice of each condition the tenant complained of.

Neither chapter gives the Mississippi holdover a name: no section calls the person a tenant at sufferance or a periodic tenant, and the word sufferance appears in the residential act not at all. What the statutes give instead is a route out. At any time after a fixed term expires the landlord may serve a written notice that the tenant is holding over and that eviction proceedings will begin no earlier than three days later, and failing to vacate after the termination or expiration of the agreement is an express eviction ground.

Damages: Double rent for the holdover period. Qualifiers: only for a lease with a definite term, only after a notice to vacate, and only from the date that notice names; and the lease may take the statutory measure away.

The residential rule carries four conditions that secondary tables routinely drop. Where a rental agreement with a definite term expires and the tenant fails or refuses to vacate after being notified by the landlord to do so, the landlord may charge double the rent for the time the tenant continues in possession following the date to vacate specified in the notification, and may do so only if the rental agreement does not contradict it (section 89-8-45). So the doubling reaches only a definite-term agreement, not a month-to-month holdover after an ordinary termination notice; it starts only after the landlord has given a notice to vacate; it runs only from the date that notice names, not from the day the term ended; and the lease may take it away, which makes it one of the few provisions in the act the parties may contract around. Late fees required by the lease count as rent under the act, so they ride along with the doubling. A second, older double-rent section sits in the general chapter and its conditions are different: it is not limited to definite-term agreements, the lease cannot defeat it, and it reaches the mirror case the residential section does not, a tenant who gives his own notice to quit at a stated time and then stays. That section was given no residential carve-out in 1991 and the residential act preserves remedies it does not prohibit, so which of the two governs a post-1991 dwelling holdover is genuinely unresolved. The decisions calling the older section the sole action for damages for a holdover date from 1937 and 1984 and predate the 2022 residential rule, and no Mississippi decision has yet construed the two together.

Unsettled: the only appellate authority arises from commercial leases.

No authority addresses a clause accelerating the remaining rent.

Whether a lease may waive the duty is not settled.

Mississippi has no statute on the point and no appellate decision that reaches it. Neither landlord-tenant chapter contains the word mitigate, and neither carries a reletting duty, a reasonable-efforts standard, an acceleration bar or a liquidated-damages rule. Mississippi's residential act is not a version of the uniform act and has no aggrieved-party remedies clause of the kind that supplies a mitigation duty in uniform-act states; its only general provision is an obligation on both sides to act in good faith. On the decided cases, the Supreme Court of Mississippi does apply a general contract duty to mitigate to an injured party and has applied it to a lessor, in a 2001 case about an outdoor-advertising ground lease, but no Mississippi appellate decision has applied that duty to a residential landlord's obligation to re-rent after a tenant leaves early. The decision most often cited for the point, a 2010 Court of Appeals case, announced no rule: it affirmed a trial court's finding that a landlord of an office suite had used reasonable efforts and then held the argument procedurally barred. Two other decisions sometimes cited are a commercial guaranty case where mitigation was held moot and a nightclub case where the duty discussed was the tenant's. That leaves the question open rather than answered either way, and nothing allocates the burden of proof. Because the chapter's anti-waiver rule bars waiving only rights and remedies under the act, and no mitigation duty is in the act, nothing in the statute stops a lease from allocating the risk of a vacancy; no Mississippi decision has tested such a clause.

No statute addresses a fee a landlord may charge for ending a lease early; the general damages rules govern.

No Mississippi statute authorizes, caps or bars a fee for ending a residential lease early. Neither chapter contains the phrase early termination or termination fee, neither mentions liquidated damages, and neither creates a buy-out right or a reletting charge; the word penalty appears only in the heading of the holdover section and in the older chapter's distress procedure. A lease may therefore set whatever early-exit charge the parties agree, subject to the ordinary law of contract. The residential act's only limits on lease content are the chapter-wide bar on agreeing to waive or forgo rights, duties or remedies under the act except as the act provides, and two named prohibitions: a lease may not authorize anyone to confess judgment on a claim arising out of it, and it may not excuse or limit the landlord's liability for the landlord's own wilful misconduct or the costs of it (section 89-8-5). Because no mitigation duty exists in Mississippi and no acceleration bar does either, what a departing tenant owes turns on the lease. This answer rests on the statutes rather than on Mississippi's administrative rules: the residential act delegates no rulemaking on lease terms, notice or fees to any state agency, and no statute points to an agency with authority over them.

Early-exit rights by ground: domestic violence and related grounds, no statute; military service beyond the federal act, the state adds nothing to the federal Servicemembers Civil Relief Act; death of the tenant, no statute; and other statutory grounds.

Domestic violence and related grounds: no statute gives a victim a right to end the lease early.

Mississippi gives a victim of domestic violence, sexual assault, stalking or trafficking no right to end a residential lease early. Neither landlord-tenant chapter contains the words domestic, violence, stalking, sexual, assault, trafficking, victim or survivor; there is no notice route, no discharge of future rent, no waiver of a fee, no lock-change right against the landlord, no confidentiality duty and no protection in later screening. What Mississippi law does give runs against the abuser rather than the landlord. Under the Protection from Domestic Abuse Law a court may grant the petitioner possession of the residence to the exclusion of the respondent, by evicting the respondent or restoring possession to the petitioner or both; may limit the respondent's physical proximity to the residence and place of work; may bar either party from transferring, encumbering or disposing of property mutually owned or leased; and, in a final order, may make the respondent pay the abused person's losses including moving expenses. None of that touches the lease: the words landlord, tenant and rent do not appear in the relief section, and a survivor who leaves the dwelling remains a tenant on the lease and remains liable for the rent. Two bills that would have created a right to leave were filed, in 2022 and 2023; both died, the second after clearing committee and being amended on the floor, and none has been filed since.

Military service: The state adds nothing to the federal Servicemembers Civil Relief Act.

Mississippi adds nothing to the federal Servicemembers Civil Relief Act. Neither landlord-tenant chapter mentions military service, a servicemember, the armed forces, the National Guard, active duty, deployment or a permanent change of station. The state's military affairs title runs to nine chapters and none of them is a civil-relief chapter; there is no Mississippi servicemember civil relief act. A Mississippi servicemember's lease rights are the federal ones and no more: written notice with a copy of the orders on a permanent change of station or a deployment of 90 days or more, with a monthly-rent lease ending 30 days after the next rent due date following delivery. The state adds no coverage for state active duty, no shorter deployment threshold, no independent right for a spouse or dependent and no faster effective date. A claim circulating in 2026 that the residential act's section 89-8-3 covers lease obligations for servicemembers and allows termination on transfer orders or a 90-day deployment is wrong: that section is the act's applicability provision and contains no military language at all.

Death of the tenant: No statute gives a right to end the lease on the tenant's death. Mississippi has no statute letting an estate or a personal representative end a lease when the tenant dies. What it has instead is a rule for the cosigner, and the drafting runs the opposite way from what most summaries say. Under the Derrick Beard Act a cosigner of a lease of residential premises may terminate, and is presumed to have terminated, the lease before its expiration date on the death of the lessee or, where there is more than one lessee, on the death of all of them; the 30 days' notice to the landlord is required only from a cosigner who chooses not to terminate (section 89-8-29). Termination is the default and the notice is the way to opt out of it. The release is not complete: neither the lessee's estate nor the cosigner is relieved of rent and other sums owed before the death, of rent for the remainder of the month or other 30-day period in which the death fell, or of the cost of restoring the premises to their condition at the start of the tenancy, ordinary wear and tear excepted. Any attempted waiver of the termination right, by contract or otherwise, is void and unenforceable. The section reaches only leases entered into or renewed on or after July 1, 2011. The Act releases the cosigner, not the estate: the estate's own liability under the lease survives.

Other grounds: Two grounds let a Mississippi tenant end the tenancy early, and one much-cited rule is not a termination right at all. First, no termination notice is required at all where the landlord has committed a substantial violation of the rental agreement or of the act that materially affects health or safety; the sentence names both parties and sits inside the landlord's notice section, so it is easy to miss, and it is the fastest exit in the chapter (section 89-8-19, subsection 4). Second, where the landlord materially breaches the agreement the tenant may end the tenancy by a written notice specifying the acts and omissions constituting the breach and stating that the agreement will terminate on a date not less than 14 days after the notice is received if the breach is not remedied within a reasonable time not exceeding 14 days; where substantially the same act or omission recurs within six months the tenant may terminate on 14 days with no further chance to cure, and neither side may terminate for a condition it caused itself. On such a termination the landlord must return all prepaid and unearned rent and the security the tenant is entitled to (section 89-8-13). Third, the casualty rule in the older chapter is a rent-abatement rule rather than a termination right: a tenant is not bound to pay rent for buildings after their destruction by fire or otherwise, and a covenant to leave the premises in good repair does not oblige the tenant to rebuild, unless the tenant was at fault or expressly agreed to be bound, so a lease may contract it away. The residential act contains no casualty provision at all. Mississippi has no job-transfer, senior-housing, care-facility, disability, foreclosure or landlord-harassment termination ground. Ending a lease over conditions the landlord will not repair is covered on the habitability page. Separately, the Derrick Beard Act lets a cosigner of a residential lease terminate it, and presumes termination, on the death of the tenant or of all the tenants; that rule is described under death of the tenant.

The landlord serves a notice of belief and the tenant has a window to respond.

Answering the presumption or notice: The constable's posted notice names the day he will return for a second view, between five and 15 days after posting; the tenant must appear then and pay the rent and any late fees due. A tenant who appears and pays defeats the procedure. A tenant who does not, and who has left no property enough to satisfy the arrears, loses possession: the justice court puts the landlord in possession immediately or within 48 hours and the lease becomes void. The tenant may appeal to the circuit court at any time within 30 days after possession is delivered, on bond.

The only statutory abandonment route sits in the older general chapter, in language of 1857 that no Mississippi decision has applied to a dwelling; the residential act has none. The Residential Landlord and Tenant Act itself creates no abandonment termination: it has no absence presumption, no notice-of-belief procedure and no bright-line period, so a landlord relying on that chapter alone has no abandonment route. The older general chapter, written for tenants of land, does carry one, and it ends the lease in terms. Where a tenant of lands who is in arrear for rent deserts the premises and leaves them uncultivated or unoccupied, so that not enough property remains on the premises to satisfy the arrears, a constable of the county may at the landlord's request, and on proof by affidavit, view the premises and, if satisfied they have been deserted, post a written notice on a conspicuous part of them stating the day he will return for a second view, between five and 15 days later, and requiring the tenant to appear then and pay the rent and any late fees due. On that second view, if the tenant does not pay and there is still not enough property on the premises, the justice court puts the landlord in possession immediately or within 48 hours and the lease to that tenant becomes void, with a 30-day appeal on bond (section 89-7-49). Two limits belong with the rule. The section carries no exclusion for agreements governed by the residential act, and the 2018 act that confined the older chapter's eviction machinery to premises not constituting a dwelling unit amended this section without adding that limit, so on the face of the statutes it reaches dwellings. But its language is that of 1857, speaking of a tenant of lands leaving them uncultivated, and no Mississippi decision has applied it to a dwelling. What the landlord may do with property the tenant leaves behind is covered separately from this page.

The residential act requires only written notice given to the other party, and stops there. For the no-cause termination notice it names no delivery method, no order of preference, no posting rule, no receipt requirement and no proof-of-delivery rule; the words certified, registered mail, conspicuous and personal service appear nowhere in the chapter in that connection, and the sheriff and the constable appear only in the eviction sections. Notice given to the landlord's agent is notice to the landlord, so a tenant's termination notice may lawfully go to the managing agent (section 89-8-7, subsection 2). Email and text message are authorized in Mississippi, but for named documents only, each on the recipient's agreement: the breach-and-cure termination notice and the repeat-breach notice, the three-day nonpayment notice, and the landlord's three-day holdover notice after a term expires. The no-cause termination notice is not among them. Two readings are open, that those authorizations are specific to the documents they name, or that a written notice may be satisfied by an agreed electronic writing, and no Mississippi authority resolves it. Note also that the breach notices require the agreement to electronic delivery to be in writing while the holdover notice requires only that the tenant has agreed.

Electronic delivery: only with written consent, a read receipt, or a lease clause.

What the notice must contain: A no-cause termination notice must be in writing and must fix a termination date at least 30 days out for a month-to-month tenancy or seven days out for a week-to-week one. Nothing else is required: no statutory form, no statement of grounds, no advisory language, no signature rule and no rule about the address it goes to. The contrast inside the same chapter is instructive. A breach-and-cure termination notice must specify the acts and omissions constituting the breach and state that the agreement will terminate on a date not less than 14 days after the notice is received if the breach is not remedied. The two documents are different and their content rules do not carry across.

Neither Mississippi landlord-tenant chapter cites, incorporates or adapts any federal statute for termination purposes. The phrase United States Code appears in neither, the Servicemembers Civil Relief Act appears in neither, and the single reference to federal law is a housing-authority provision about compliance with applicable federal laws and regulations. A Mississippi tenancy's federal overlays are therefore the free-standing federal rules and nothing the state has added to them: the federal servicemember act, which is the whole of a Mississippi servicemember's right to end a lease, and, for a covered dwelling, the federal 30-day notice requirement. The federal Violence Against Women Act supplies no right to end a private lease, and Mississippi provides no state substitute.

The federal CARES Act 30-day notice to vacate for covered properties, as read in this state's courts: no state appellate decision construes it. No Mississippi appellate decision construes the federal 30-day notice requirement for covered dwellings. A landlord of a covered dwelling in Mississippi therefore has no state holding either way, and no standing court order or published trial-court practice on the point was found. (Appellate picture read as of September 4, 2026.)

Mississippi State Department of Public Welfare v. Howie, 449 So. 2d 772 (Miss. 1984) (Supreme Court of Mississippi; arose from a commercial lease; bears on the end of a fixed term): The court held that the older double-rent section was intended by the legislature to provide the sole action for damages resulting from a tenant's holding over, and that the common-law rule imposing renewal of an expired lease on a holdover tenant had been abrogated once and for all and could no longer be used. The holdover was a state agency occupying office space, so the case arose from a commercial lease, but the abrogation is stated categorically and is not limited by its terms to commercial tenancies. The decision predates both the 1991 residential act and the 2022 residential double-rent section.

Dungan v. Presley, 765 So. 2d 592 (Miss. Ct. App. 2000) (Court of Appeals of Mississippi; a general statement of law; bears on holding over): Restating the 1984 decision, the court said its effect was to make the older double-rent section the sole remedy for landlords against holdover tenants. The case arose from a ten-year lease of land for hunting, grazing and haying rather than from a dwelling, so it is not residential authority, but the statement of the rule is general.

Frierson v. Delta Outdoor, Inc., 794 So. 2d 220 (Miss. 2001) (Supreme Court of Mississippi; arose from a commercial lease; bears on the duty to re-let): Reversing a damages award to a lessor, the court said the law limits speculation and conjecture and imposes duties of mitigation on the injured party, and observed that the lessor could rent the currently available advertising space to mitigate part of its damages. This is the nearest Mississippi authority applying a mitigation duty to a landlord, but it arose from a commercial outdoor-advertising ground lease and states a general contract-damages principle rather than a landlord-tenant rule.