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

Landlord: one calendar month. Tenant: one calendar month.

The figure beside a Missouri month-to-month tenancy is one calendar month, not 30 days, and two further conditions travel with it. The month runs from the day the other party receives the notice, not from the day it is sent, so a mailed notice puts the proof of receipt on the sender. And the notice must state a termination date that is itself a periodic rent-paying date falling at least that month after receipt, so unlike most states the tenancy cannot end in the middle of a period; a notice given on the tenth of a month with rent due on the first therefore reaches the first of the month after next, which is closer to seven weeks than to thirty days. A year-to-year tenancy counts differently again: the notice must be given not less than 60 days before the end of the year, so it is anchored to the end of the term rather than to a receipt date.

The termination date must fall on a rental-period boundary or a rent-due date.

Tiers: Missouri splits by the kind of tenancy rather than by tenure, building age, subsidy or protected class. A month-to-month tenancy takes one month's written notice from either side, running from receipt to a rent-paying date. A tenancy at will, a tenancy by sufferance, or any tenancy for less than a year that is not month-to-month takes one month's written notice, but that section runs only one way, to the person in possession, so a tenant holding such an estate has no reciprocal statutory notice of their own. An unwritten letting of a building in a city, town or village is a month-to-month tenancy by operation of law and takes one month's written notice from either party, with no rent-date condition attached. A year-to-year tenancy takes 60 days from either side before the end of the year. One property-type tier exists: where the tenant owns a manufactured home and rents the land or lot under it, a tenancy of less than a year may be ended by the landlord only on written notice that the tenancy ends not sooner than 60 days from the date the next rent payment falls due, and that overrides any shorter period the lease sets. There is no week-to-week variant anywhere in the chapter.

The parties may agree to a different period, including no notice at all. Missouri lets the parties contract the notice away entirely. The statute says no notice to quit is necessary from or to a tenant whose term is to end at a certain time, or when notice is dispensed with by special agreement, and there is no anti-waiver clause anywhere in the chapter to limit it. The waiver runs in both directions, so a lease may release the tenant as well as the landlord. One rule cuts the other way once a notice has actually been given: in a later suit between the parties, spoken evidence is not admissible to vary, alter or abrogate the notice, which may be changed only by written evidence bearing a date after the notice itself. A landlord who agrees over the phone to let a noticed tenant stay on has therefore not changed anything unless it is put in writing and dated.

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 stating that the tenancy will end on a periodic rent-paying date not less than one month after the notice is received. The content is operative, not a formality: the notice has to name the date and the date has to be a rent-paying one. A tenancy at will, a tenancy by sufferance or a tenancy for less than a year is ended by one month's written notice from the person entitled to possession, requiring the person in possession to leave. An unwritten letting of a building in a city, town or village is a month-to-month tenancy by statute and is ended by one month's written notice from either party of an intention to end it, with no rent-date condition. A year-to-year tenancy is ended by either party on written notice of an intention to terminate, given not less than 60 days before the end of the year. No reason has to be given in any of these, and nothing requires the two sides' periods to match. A tenant who gives their own written notice to quit and then stays owes double the rent reserved for as long as they remain, so a tenant should not serve notice unless they intend to go. The notice may be dispensed with altogether by special agreement in the lease.

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

Local ordinances: no statute or decision addresses them. Missouri says nothing about local just-cause or eviction-control ordinances, and it is important not to over-read the preemption statute it does have. That statute bars a county or city from regulating the amount of rent charged for privately owned residential or commercial rental property, and, since 2025, from four further things: forbidding a landlord to refuse a tenant because their lawful source of income includes a housing assistance program; restricting a landlord's use of income-qualifying methods, credit scores or reports, eviction or property damage history, or criminal history; limiting the amount of a security deposit; and requiring that tenants automatically get a right of first refusal. That list is closed and a just-cause or good-cause ordinance is not on it, so Missouri does not preempt local just-cause rules; it simply does not address them. The statute expressly leaves cities and counties free to regulate their own property, to make voluntary agreements about rent on subsidized properties, to restrict rent on properties assisted with community development block grant funds, and to bar discrimination against recipients of veterans' benefits. A separate rule in the eviction chapter bars any local eviction moratorium unless state law authorizes it. How far a locality may regulate the amount of rent is answered on the rent-increase page.

No reason is required in Missouri to end a periodic tenancy or to decline to renew a lease. Nothing in the landlord and tenant chapter or in the two possession chapters conditions a termination or a non-renewal on a ground, and the state has come close to changing that only for particular groups: a 2026 bill would have required cause to end a manufactured-home lot tenancy and another would have created rental protections for veterans, and both died in committee. Missouri is also unusual for a state without a ground requirement in having no anti-retaliation statute and no retaliation presumption for residential tenancies at all; the only protection of that kind is a clause barring a lease from waiving the tenant's repair-and-deduct remedy, and it does not stop the landlord ending the tenancy afterwards. What Missouri law does bar is a locality regulating rent amounts, source-of-income refusals, screening criteria, deposit caps, rights of first refusal, or eviction moratoria.

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 written lease that expires does not renew itself in Missouri and holding over does not create a new tenancy by implication. In any suit for possession after a written lease has run out, spoken evidence is not admissible that the lease was renewed or extended or that a new contract replaced it; the tenant's right to stay on, or the landlord's right to collect rent afterwards, has to be established by a contract in writing. An appellate court applied that rule to a tenant who held over eleven days after a written lease expired and held that no new tenancy arose. The one place Missouri does convert a tenancy by statute is different in kind: an unwritten letting of a building in a city, town or village is a month-to-month tenancy from the start rather than on a holdover.

A fixed-term lease ends on its date and no notice is due from either side, because no notice to quit is necessary from or to a tenant whose term is to end at a certain time. Missouri goes further than most states and lets the parties dispense with notice by special agreement even where one would otherwise be required. No statute anywhere in the landlord and tenant chapter or the two possession chapters requires notice of non-renewal, and none requires a landlord to remind a tenant before an automatic-renewal clause takes effect. After a written lease expires there is no implied renewal: continued possession has to be papered, and spoken evidence of a renewal is inadmissible.

Missouri's landlord and tenant chapter puts no label on a holdover: it does not call the occupant a tenant at sufferance or say what estate they hold. Possession is recovered through the forcible entry and detainer chapter, which is covered on the eviction page, and the writing rule means a written lease is not renewed by the tenant staying on.

Damages: Missouri has two double-damages statutes and neither is a general double-rent rule, so a landlord has to work out which one, if either, applies. The first reaches a tenant for life or for years, or anyone who comes into possession under or in collusion with such a tenant, who wilfully holds over after the term ends and after a demand has been made and written notice given requiring possession; that tenant pays double the yearly value of the property for all the time the owner is kept out. All three conditions are cumulative, so a periodic tenant is outside it, and so is a holdover that is not wilful or that follows no demand and written notice. The second reaches a tenant who gave written notice of an intention to quit at a stated time and then did not go; from that time the tenant pays the landlord double the rent reserved for as long as they stay. That one needs no wilfulness and no demand, but it applies only where the tenant served the notice. A separate section supplies the procedure for recovering the second measure. Where neither applies, the landlord's remedy is possession and the ordinary rent claim.

No duty: a residential appellate holding says so.

When it attaches: Missouri gives a landlord whose tenant defaults three choices, and only one of them carries any re-letting obligation. The landlord may stay out of possession, treat the term as continuing, and sue for the rent as it falls due; may give the tenant notice, take possession, and try to reduce the loss, with the tenant liable for what is left; or may retake possession without notice and end the lease. The obligation belongs to the second choice alone. A landlord who takes the first choice owes nothing, and an appellate court has said so in a residential case, holding that owners who advertised the unit after a tenant cancelled were reducing their loss even though they had no duty to do so.

No authority addresses a clause accelerating the remaining rent.

Whether a lease may waive the duty is not settled.

There is no general duty on a Missouri landlord to find a new tenant after one leaves early. The rule comes from a line of appellate decisions rather than a statute, and it gives the landlord three options on a tenant's default: stay out of possession and sue for the rent as it accrues, with no obligation to re-let; give notice, take possession and try to reduce the loss, holding the tenant liable for the shortfall; or retake possession without notice and end the lease. The leading residential decision says in terms that owners who advertised a cancelled unit had no duty to do so under the first option. The commercial line says the same thing more bluntly, that a landlord may let the premises lie idle and collect the rent as it accrues, and adds that where the lease itself authorizes the landlord to re-enter and re-let as the tenant's agent, a repossession is presumed to have been for the tenant's benefit unless the presumption is rebutted. No decision allocates the burden of proving reasonable efforts, and no statute addresses a clause accelerating the remaining rent. One statutory duty does exist and it is scoped to a single remedy: a landlord may withhold from the security deposit the actual damages caused by a tenant's failure to give adequate notice to end the tenancy only if the landlord makes reasonable efforts to reduce those damages. That condition bears on the deposit and not on a claim for rent, so the answer differs depending on which the landlord is pursuing.

A statute authorizes an early-termination fee or election without a cap.

Missouri caps nothing. No statute limits an early-termination fee, a liquidated-damages clause or a re-letting charge in a residential lease, and no statute caps what a landlord may recover from a tenant who leaves before the end of a term. The one place the code speaks to such a fee, it permits one: a landlord or property owner may impose a reasonable termination fee on a tenant who wants to end a lease early under the survivor provision, and reasonable is the only limit the statute gives. Missouri is unusual in that respect, because most states that address a survivor's early departure bar a fee rather than authorizing one. The chapter carries no anti-waiver clause to fall back on either, and it expressly lets the parties dispense with the termination notice by agreement. The only genuine cap in this area is on the security deposit, which may not exceed two months' rent, and that is covered on the deposits page. Neither the landlord and tenant chapter nor the landlord-tenant actions chapter delegates rulemaking to any agency, so no state regulation can carry a lease-termination fee rule; this answer rests on the statutes rather than on the state's regulations.

Early-exit rights by ground: domestic violence and related grounds, a defense to rent rather than a right to leave; military service beyond the federal act, state orders or National Guard duty are covered and a deployment or transfer threshold below the federal act's; death of the tenant, no statute; and no other statutory ground.

Domestic violence and related grounds: no right to quit, but victim status is a defense or release when the landlord sues for rent.

Who qualifies: The protection reaches an applicant, tenant or lessee who is, has been, or is in imminent danger of becoming a victim of domestic violence, sexual assault or stalking, each taking the definition used in the state's adult abuse chapter. Domestic violence there means abuse or stalking committed by a family or household member, which reaches spouses and former spouses, relatives by blood or marriage, present and past cohabitants, people in a continuing romantic or intimate relationship, and anyone with a child in common. Sexual assault means causing or attempting to cause another to engage involuntarily in a sexual act by force, threat of force, duress, or without consent. Stalking means purposely engaging in an unwanted course of conduct that causes alarm. Human trafficking is not covered. The provision applies only to residential properties. Including a person in imminent danger of becoming a victim is a real widening, because it does not require that anything has yet happened.

Documentation: The tenant gives the landlord a statement of the abuse. If the landlord then asks for more, the tenant supplies one of two things. The first is a document signed by an employee of a victim service provider, or by a health care or mental health professional the victim sought assistance from, stating under penalty of perjury that they believe the incident occurred; that document must also be signed by the victim. The second is a record of a federal, state or local law enforcement agency, including a police report, or of a court or an administrative agency, about the alleged incident. No protective order is required, which most summaries of Missouri law get wrong. The landlord is under no statutory duty to keep any of it confidential.

Window: Missouri sets no window of any kind. The statute contains no requirement that the abuse have happened within a stated number of days before the tenant acts and no deadline by which the tenant must act after it. Because the mechanism is a defense raised when the landlord sues rather than a notice that ends the tenancy, there is nothing for a window to run against.

Notice: There is no notice period because there is no right to give notice and quit. Missouri does not let a survivor end the lease; it protects a survivor who has already left. The tenant must have notified the landlord and supplied any documentation the landlord asked for before the protection is available, but the statute sets no period for that notice and no form for it, and the tenancy does not end when it is given. The protection is then raised as a defense in whatever action the landlord brings.

Rent owed: Where the court finds, on the balance of probabilities, that the tenant was a victim or was in imminent danger of becoming one and had notified the landlord and supplied any documentation requested, the tenant is not liable for rent for the period after the tenant leaves. Rent that accrued up to the day the tenant left is unaffected, and so is anything else already owed.

Cost to the tenant: Missouri expressly permits a charge here. A landlord or property owner may impose a reasonable termination fee on a tenant who wants to end a lease before its expiry date under this provision, and the statute gives no cap and no definition of reasonable. That is the opposite of the arrangement in most states, where a survivor's departure is fee-free. Nothing in the section addresses the security deposit, so the ordinary deposit rules govern it.

Other tenants on the lease: the statute is silent on the other tenants.

Locks: Lock changes are not addressed.

Later screening: a landlord may not deny, refuse to renew, or terminate because of victim status or a past victim-status termination. A separate part of the same section bars a landlord from denying tenancy to an applicant, evicting a tenant, or finding a tenant in breach of the lease on the basis of, or as a direct result of, the fact that the person is, has been, or is in imminent danger of becoming a victim of domestic violence, sexual assault or stalking, provided the person otherwise qualifies for the tenancy. It reaches applicants as well as sitting tenants. Two carve-outs apply: the bar does not help a tenant who let the person named in the documentation into the home, and it does not apply where the landlord reasonably believes that person poses a threat to the safety of the other occupants or of the property. Nothing in Missouri law bars a landlord or a screening service from reporting or characterizing a departure adversely afterwards, and a separate 2025 statute forbids localities from restricting a landlord's use of eviction history in screening.

The landlord's side: The landlord may ask for documentation before the protection bites, and may impose a reasonable termination fee. The anti-discrimination bar does not apply where the tenant allowed the person named in the documentation into the home, or where the landlord reasonably believes that person poses a threat to the safety of the other occupants or of the property. And a tenant who submits false information under the section may be denied tenancy, evicted, or found in breach of the lease on that basis. The statute imposes no confidentiality duty on the landlord and gives the landlord no claim against the person responsible.

Missouri does not give a survivor the right to end a lease. What it gives is a defense. Where a landlord sues a tenant under the landlord and tenant chapter or either possession chapter, the tenant has a defense and is not liable for rent for the period after the tenant leaves, if the court finds on the balance of probabilities that the tenant was a victim, or was in imminent danger of becoming a victim, of domestic violence, sexual assault or stalking, and that the tenant notified the landlord and supplied any documentation the landlord requested. There is no notice period, no window on how recent the abuse must be, no rule about other tenants on the lease, no lock-change right and no duty on the landlord to keep the documentation confidential. A landlord may charge a reasonable termination fee anyway. A separate rule in the same section bars denying, evicting, or finding a lease breach on the basis of victim status, subject to two carve-outs, and a tenant who submits false information may be denied, evicted or found in breach because of it.

Military service: State orders or National Guard duty are covered and a deployment or transfer threshold below the federal act's.

When the state rights attach: The two rights attach at different moments and to different people. The lease-termination right in the military forces chapter belongs to the member alone while they hold one of its four triggers; dependents get nothing of their own under it. The extension of the federal act to Guard members works differently: the statute says a Guard member called to active state duty for more than thirty consecutive days is entitled to those rights and protections upon being relieved from such duty, so the entitlement is framed around the end of the duty rather than its start, and the same is true for a Missouri employee serving in another state's Guard.

Missouri gives service members two separate state rights. The first is a lease-termination right in the military forces chapter, and it is broader than the federal act on several fronts. It covers any member of the armed forces on active duty and any member of the Missouri Army or Air National Guard serving on full-time duty or as a civil service technician, who is a tenant under a residential lease, on any of four triggers: permanent change of station orders; temporary duty orders of more than ninety days assigning them at least twenty-five miles away; discharge or release from active duty or from full-time or technician status; or an order to live in government-supplied quarters. The last three are triggers federal law does not give. The tenant serves the landlord written notice of termination effective on a date stated in it, which may not be less than fifteen days after service, and before that date supplies a copy of the official orders or a signed letter from their commanding officer confirming them. The final lease payment is due by the effective date and payable when the lease would have required it, and the tenant is entitled to the full return of any security deposit and pet deposit provided they have otherwise complied with the lease and the deposit statute. The second right is newer, effective in August 2026: a member of the Missouri National Guard called to active state duty by the governor or the adjutant general for more than thirty consecutive days, and a Missouri employee serving in another state's Guard on the same footing, is entitled on being relieved from that duty to all the rights and protections of the federal Servicemembers Civil Relief Act, which includes its residential lease-termination right. Federal law does not reach state active duty, so this is a genuine addition. Either person may sue in any court of competent jurisdiction if they believe their rights under it were violated, and the attorney general may sue an employer who violates it.

Death of the tenant: No statute gives a right to end the lease on the tenant's death.

Other grounds: Missouri has no other statutory ground for a tenant to end a lease early. There is no early-termination right for a move into a nursing home, an assisted-living facility or senior housing, none for a job transfer or a change of employment, none tied to a disability, and none for a crime victim beyond the survivor defense described above. One section comes close and is not a termination right: where a home is destroyed by an act of God, including a fire or a tornado, or by another natural or man-made disaster the tenant did not cause, the tenant is not liable to the landlord for rent for the remainder of the lease term. It discharges the rent obligation without, by its terms, ending the tenancy. A landlord who unlawfully removes or shuts out a tenant is liable in damages, but that does not give the tenant a right to quit either. Ending a lease because the home is not habitable is covered on the habitability page.

The landlord serves a notice of belief and the tenant has a window to respond. The tenant's window to respond is 10 days.

Answering the presumption or notice: The tenant defeats the deemed abandonment either by paying the rent or by responding in writing that they do not intend to abandon the home. The ten days run from both the posting and the deposit of the notice in the mail, so where the two happen on different days the later one starts the clock. The statutory notice tells the tenant to send the response by regular first-class mail, and by certified mail with a return receipt if they choose, to the landlord's name and street address, which the notice must set out.

Four conditions must all be met before a Missouri home is deemed abandoned. The landlord must reasonably believe the tenant has left and does not intend to return. The rent must be due and unpaid for thirty days. The landlord must both post a written notice on the premises and mail it to the tenant's last known address by first-class mail and by certified mail with a return receipt requested. And the tenant must fail either to pay the rent or to respond in writing within ten days after both the posting and the mailing. The notice's words are prescribed by statute: it states that the rent has been unpaid for thirty consecutive days, that the landlord believes the tenant has moved out, that the landlord may declare the property abandoned and remove and dispose of the tenant's possessions unless the tenant writes back within ten days, and where to write. One limit is worth stating plainly, because it is easy to overstate what this section does: it is drafted as a rule about property left behind, and what the finding unlocks is the landlord's freedom to remove or dispose of that property without liability. Neither this section nor any other Missouri statute says in terms that the tenancy itself ends, so a landlord who wants possession still goes through the ordinary route covered on the eviction page. What happens to the belongings is covered separately from this page.

The termination sections say the notice must be in writing and prescribe no method, so the general statute on serving statutory notices fills the gap, and the landlord and tenant chapter points to it. Where a statute requires notice and does not expressly direct a different method, service is made by delivering a true copy of the notice to the person meant to be notified, or by leaving a copy at their usual place of abode with a member of their family over the age of fifteen. Those are the only two routes. There is no posting route and no mail route for an ordinary termination notice, and no sheriff, constable or process server is required; officer service belongs to the possession case and is covered on the eviction page. The exception is the abandonment notice, which the statute requires to be posted on the premises and mailed by both first-class and certified mail with a return receipt requested. Mailing an ordinary termination notice is risky for a different reason: the month for a month-to-month tenancy runs from receipt, so a landlord who mails it carries the burden of showing when it arrived.

Electronic delivery: the termination statute is silent on it.

What the notice must contain: Missouri prescribes no form but it does make the content operative, which is unusual for a state that prescribes no delivery method. A month-to-month notice must state that the tenancy will end on a periodic rent-paying date not less than one month after the notice is received, so a notice that names no date, or names one that is not a rent-paying date, does not do the job. A notice ending a tenancy at will, a tenancy by sufferance or a tenancy for less than a year must require the person in possession to leave the premises. A year-to-year notice must state the intention to terminate. The abandonment notice is the one place the statute writes out the words to be used. Nothing in the code authorizes or forbids sending a termination notice by email, so the point is simply unaddressed.

Missouri's landlord and tenant chapter references no federal statute at all. The one federal reference in this area is in the military chapter, where a 2026 amendment gives members of the Missouri National Guard called to active state duty for more than thirty consecutive days, and Missouri employees serving in another state's Guard on the same footing, all the rights and protections of the federal Servicemembers Civil Relief Act, including its residential lease-termination right, upon being relieved from that duty. The preemption statute touches federal housing assistance only from the other direction, by forbidding a locality to require landlords to accept it.

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 published Missouri appellate decision construes the federal 30-day notice for covered dwellings: neither the Supreme Court of Missouri nor the Court of Appeals has published a decision that mentions the provision in an eviction, and the landlord and tenant chapter does not write it into state law. The federal provision is unrepealed and unamended and applies of its own force to covered dwellings. A landlord of a federally backed or subsidized property should treat the question of how a Missouri court would read its scope as open. (Appellate picture read as of September 4, 2026.)

Kimack v. Adams, 930 S.W.2d 505 (Mo. Ct. App. 1996) (Missouri Court of Appeals, Eastern District; residential lease; bears on the duty to re-let): A tenant who had rented a condominium for a month cancelled two days before the term began, and the owners kept the prepaid rent. The court held the arrangement was a lease rather than a license and applied the state's three-options rule, finding that the owners had chosen to stay out of possession and treat the term as continuing; when they advertised the unit again they were reducing their loss even though they had no duty to do so under that option. It is the residential authority for the proposition that a Missouri landlord who does not retake possession owes no duty to find a new tenant.

Hurwitz v. Kohm, 594 S.W.2d 643 (Mo. Ct. App. 1980) (Missouri Court of Appeals; arose from a commercial lease; bears on the duty to re-let): The court endorsed the settled rule that a landlord is under no duty to seek a new tenant when the tenant abandons before the end of the term, and may let the premises lie idle and collect the rent as it accrues. It then decided a narrower point: where the lease itself authorizes the landlord to re-enter on the tenant's default and re-let the property as the tenant's agent to reduce the damages, a repossession is presumed, subject to rebuttal, to have been made for the tenant's benefit rather than as an acceptance of surrender. The case arose from a commercial lease of office space, so its statement of the no-duty rule is a commercial one; the residential authority is separate.

Smith v. Seamster, 36 S.W.3d 18 (Mo. Ct. App. 2000) (Missouri Court of Appeals; a general statement of law; bears on the duty to re-let): The court restated the same three options open to a landlord on a tenant's default and held that no duty to reduce the loss arose in an ejectment action where no landlord and tenant relationship existed between the parties. It confirms that in Missouri the three-options election is the operative frame rather than a general obligation to make reasonable efforts.