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

The residential landlord and tenant act reaches only counties with more than 75,000 people according to the 2010 federal census, which on the published census counts is 17 counties holding about 64 percent of the state's people: Shelby, Davidson, Knox, Hamilton, Rutherford, Williamson, Montgomery, Sumner, Sullivan, Blount, Washington, Wilson, Bradley, Madison, Sevier, Maury and Anderson. Inside those counties the act also reaches only agreements entered into, extended or renewed after July 1, 1975, and it excludes occupancy at an institution, occupancy by a purchaser under a contract of sale, transient occupancy in a hotel or motel, occupancy by a condominium owner or a cooperative proprietary lessee, and premises used primarily for agricultural purposes, and it steps aside for federally regulated or government- and nonprofit-owned units to the extent the federal regulation conflicts with state law. In the other 78 counties the act supplies nothing, and the older chapter and the common law govern. Two further rights carry their own lease-date gates: the early-termination right for victims of domestic abuse, sexual assault or stalking reaches only agreements entered into or renewed on or after July 1, 2021, and the 60-day notice for an older tenant in a federally assisted facility reaches only agreements entered into, amended or renewed on or after July 1, 2023.

The switch is the county's 2010 census population, not its population today, so a county that has since grown past 75,000 is still outside the act; Putnam County is the clearest example, at 72,321 in 2010 and about 79,858 in 2020. Anderson County clears the threshold by 129 people. Tennessee publishes no official list of the covered counties and no court has construed the threshold, so a reader compares the county's own 2010 census count with the 75,000 figure. The list stays fixed unless the legislature re-pins the statute to a later census. On top of that, two answers turn on when the agreement was signed: the domestic-abuse termination right needs an agreement entered into or renewed on or after July 1, 2021, and the 60-day older-tenant notice needs one entered into, amended or renewed on or after July 1, 2023 — a limit that appears in the act that created the rule and not in the printed code section.

The switch changes: every answer on this page.

Landlord: 30 days. Tenant: 30 days.

In the counties the act covers, the two tenancy types count differently and the difference is in the words of the statute. A month-to-month notice runs to the periodic rental date specified in the notice, which is the next date rent falls due, so the tenancy ends on a rent-due boundary. A week-to-week notice runs to the termination date specified in the notice, so the party giving it picks the date and the count runs forward from service. In the counties outside the act the common-law rule is different again: the notice must equal one full period and must expire with the period, so a month's notice given in the middle of a month does not end the tenancy at the end of that month.

Whether the termination date must fall on a rental-period boundary or a rent-due date differs between tenancy types or is not settled by the statute; the rule for each is stated above.

Tiers: Inside the act, a week-to-week tenancy takes 10 days and a month-to-month tenancy takes 30, from either side. One statewide tier lengthens the notice to 60 days: a landlord must give 60 days' notice of termination for the purpose of eviction where the tenant is 55 or older, lives in a facility that provides housing for older persons and receives federal financial assistance under section 504 of the federal Rehabilitation Act, has paid the rent due and is not in arrears, and the termination is to allow new property development, meaning razing the facility for another use or renovating it so tenants must leave and it can be offered at market rate. That tier appears twice, once inside the act and once in the older chapter, so it covers the whole state; it does not affect a landlord's right to end a tenancy for a violation of the lease or of another law. Outside the act there is no statutory period at all. The common law supplies one instead, and it varies with the length of the period: a week's notice on a week-to-week tenancy, a month's notice on a month-to-month tenancy, and six months' notice on a year-to-year tenancy, in each case expiring with the period.

A lease may not change the period. The bar runs one way only. Inside the act a rental agreement cannot provide that the tenant waives or forgoes rights or remedies under the chapter, and the tenant cannot agree to waive or forgo them, so a lease cannot shorten the tenant's 30 days or 10 days. Nothing stops a landlord from agreeing to give the tenant longer notice, and the act expressly lets the parties include terms and conditions it does not prohibit. Outside the act no statute addresses waiver of the common-law notice period.

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.

In the counties the act covers, either the landlord or the tenant may end a week-to-week tenancy by written notice given at least 10 days before the termination date specified in the notice, and either may end a month-to-month tenancy by written notice given at least 30 days before the periodic rental date specified in the notice. One subsection binds both sides, so the periods are the same in each direction and there is no separate tenant section. No reason has to be given. The notice must be in writing and must name the operative date; the act prescribes no delivery method beyond writing to the last known or designated address in the lease. In the counties outside the act no statute sets a no-cause period. The Court of Appeals held in 1945, in a case about a dwelling, that a periodic tenancy continues until one side gives notice equal to a full period, expiring with the period: a week for a week-to-week tenancy, a month for a month-to-month tenancy, and six months for a year-to-year tenancy; the same decision holds that the unlawful-detainer statute's rule that no notice to quit is needed does not dispense with that notice. Neither party may end the tenancy without it. Statewide, a landlord must give 60 days' notice where the tenant is 55 or older, is current on rent, lives in a federally assisted facility for older persons, and the termination is to allow redevelopment. A missing notice inside the act is not a jurisdictional defect in the possession case; the Court of Appeals has held it goes to the relief available.

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

Local ordinances: the state chapter occupies the field of landlord-tenant regulation. In the counties the act covers, the act says it occupies and preempts the entire field of legislation concerning the regulation of landlords and tenants, and the sentence that actually prohibits local rules names only the governing body of a county: such a county may not enact or enforce regulations that conflict with, or add to, the act. The prohibition sentence does not name municipalities. In the other counties that clause has no application and no statute addresses local just-cause rules either way. Rent-amount regulation is preempted separately and statewide against counties and incorporated municipalities alike, and is covered on the rent-increase page; that preemption says nothing about grounds for ending a tenancy.

No reason is required to end a periodic tenancy or to let a fixed term expire anywhere in Tennessee. Inside the act either side simply gives the statutory notice; outside it, either side gives the common-law notice. The ground-keyed notice periods in the older chapter, and the three-day notice inside the act, are for-cause routes covered on the eviction page, not a general requirement of cause. Two narrow protections cut across this. A landlord may not end a tenancy and evict a residential tenant solely because the tenant or a household member is a victim of domestic abuse, sexual assault or stalking. And where domestic abuse is the underlying offense for a termination, only the perpetrator may be evicted; the landlord may not evict the victims, minor children under 18, or innocent occupants based solely on the abuse, provided the conditions attached to that protection are met.

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

After the term, a statute supplies what a holdover becomes. Inside the act, a tenant who stays on after the term with the landlord's consent falls under the act's rent rule, which makes periodic rent payable at the beginning of each month unless the parties agree otherwise, so the continuing tenancy is monthly and the 30-day notice then governs it. The trigger is the landlord's consent, not the acceptance of rent as such. Outside the act the rule is materially different: the landlord may elect to treat the holdover either as an unlawful detainer or as creating a new tenancy for another like term, and accepting rent is how that election is made. If the original term was a year or more the new tenancy is year to year, which then takes six months' notice to end; if the original term was shorter, the new tenancy is measured by that shorter period. The tenant is bound for the full new period. The lease may specify a different holdover period.

A fixed term ends on its own date in both parts of the state. Nothing in either chapter requires notice before a fixed term expires or notice of non-renewal, and neither chapter has a statute requiring a landlord to remind a tenant before an automatic-renewal clause takes effect. What happens next depends on the county. Inside the act a holdover with the landlord's consent continues as a monthly tenancy. Outside the act a holdover the landlord accepts rent for revives the tenancy for another term like the original one, so a one-year lease can become a year-to-year tenancy needing six months' notice.

Inside the act, a tenant who stays in possession without the landlord's consent after the term expires or the tenancy is ended holds no tenancy: the landlord may bring an action for possession, back rent, reasonable attorney's fees and any other damages the lease provides. If the landlord consents to the continued occupancy the tenancy carries on as a monthly one. Outside the act the landlord elects between treating the stay as an unlawful detainer and treating it as a new tenancy for another like term.

Damages: An enhanced measure that attaches only to a wilful or bad-faith holdover. Qualifiers: attorney fees added by statute.

Tennessee has no double-rent and no treble-rent holdover statute in either chapter. Inside the act the landlord's ordinary recovery is possession, back rent, reasonable attorney's fees and any damages the lease provides. On top of that, and only where the holdover is wilful and not in good faith, the landlord may also recover actual damages sustained plus reasonable attorney's fees; good faith means honesty in fact in the conduct of the transaction concerned, and the act imposes a good-faith obligation on every duty under it. A rule cuts the other way for the landlord: accepting rent without reservation and with knowledge of a tenant default condones the default and bars ending the tenancy for that breach. Outside the act there is no statutory measure at all, and the exposure is the rent for the full new period the holdover creates.

What a consented holdover becomes: Outside the act a consented holdover converts to a tenancy measured by the original term rather than to a monthly one, so a lease of a year or more becomes a year-to-year tenancy.

Yes: both a statute and an independent appellate doctrine impose the duty.

When it attaches: Inside the act the duty is chapter-wide and bilateral: the remedies are to be administered so the aggrieved party recovers lawful damages, and the aggrieved party has an obligation and duty to mitigate. Nothing conditions it on abandonment, so it attaches whenever either side claims damages under the act. Outside the act the duty is narrower and comes from the courts, which have keyed it expressly to abandonment: a landlord owes it once the tenant has abandoned, and the Court of Appeals has held a tenant who refuses to give up possession cannot then complain that the landlord failed to mitigate.

Burden of proof: no authority allocates it.

The standard: Where the tenant abandons the unit the landlord must use reasonable efforts to re-rent it at a fair rental. Two consequences travel with that duty inside the act. If the landlord rents the unit for a term beginning before the original agreement would have ended, the original agreement ends as of the date of the new tenancy, which caps what the departing tenant owes. And on a month-to-month or week-to-week tenancy the remaining term is deemed to be a month or a week for this purpose. Outside the act the standard is the same reasonable-efforts formula, and a landlord is not required to force a tenant out in order to re-let.

No authority addresses a clause accelerating the remaining rent.

The lease may not waive the duty.

Inside the act the duty to mitigate is statutory and general: the aggrieved party has an obligation and duty to mitigate damages, a clause that binds both sides and is not limited to abandonment, and a separate section then supplies the re-letting mechanism for an abandoned unit. Because a tenant cannot agree to waive a right under the act, a lease cannot make the tenant give the duty up. Outside the act there is no statute, and the duty rests on appellate decisions that all arose from commercial leases: the Supreme Court applied a reasonable-efforts standard after a commercial tenant's abandonment in 1983, and the Court of Appeals stated the rule in 1991 and restated it in 1998. No Tennessee decision arising from a home has ever stated the rule. Neither the statute nor any decision says who must prove that reasonable efforts were or were not made; the only signal is that failure to mitigate has been treated as a matter a defendant must plead as an affirmative defense, and no opinion states a burden formula in words, so the allocation is left as the authorities leave it. Nothing in either chapter addresses a clause accelerating the remaining rent, and the act lets a landlord bring a claim for possession and rent and a separate claim for actual damages for breach without stating any limit of that kind.

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

No Tennessee statute authorizes, caps, or bars a fee for ending a residential lease early, in either part of the state. A buy-out or re-letting charge is a matter of contract, bounded inside the act by the unconscionability section, which lets a court refuse to enforce an unconscionable agreement or clause, and by the act's good-faith obligation. The practical limit on what a landlord recovers is the duty to mitigate rather than any cap. Two statutory releases are absolute rather than capped: a tenant ending the lease as a victim of domestic abuse, sexual assault or stalking leaves without liability for future rent and early-termination penalties or fees, and a tenant with a physical disability accepted into public housing terminates without incurring penalties or owing rent after ceasing to occupy the property. The state's administrative rules were not searched line by line for this page: no division of the compilation regulates residential landlord-tenant relations, and the closest divisions govern real-estate licensees, appraisers, insurance and housing-finance programs, none of which reaches a lease's early-termination charges.

Early-exit rights by ground: domestic violence and related grounds, a statutory right to end the lease; 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: a victim may end the lease on notice.

Who qualifies: A domestic abuse victim, a sexual assault victim or a stalking victim, each as those terms are defined in the state's domestic abuse law. The tenant qualifies whether the victim is the tenant or a household member, meaning a member of the tenant's family who lives in the same household, and whether the victim is an adult or a child. Human trafficking is not covered: the word appears nowhere in either chapter.

Separate schemes: The right was enacted twice by one 2021 act, as two near-identical sections, so that it reaches the whole state: one section sits inside the residential landlord and tenant act and governs in the counties that act covers, and the other sits in the older chapter and governs in the rest. The wording differs only in two immaterial words. Which section applies matters even so, because the one inside the act comes with that act's anti-waiver rule, its duty-to-mitigate clause and its coverage exclusions, and the other does not.

Documentation: A closed list of two items, both court-anchored. Either a copy of a valid order of protection issued or extended after a hearing at which the court found by a preponderance of the evidence that the tenant or household member is a domestic abuse, sexual assault or stalking victim; or documentation evidencing a criminal charge of domestic abuse, sexual assault or stalking based on a police report reflecting that the tenant or household member was subject to it. There is no route through an advocate, a counselor, a health provider or the tenant's own certification, and a police report on its own is not enough unless it underlies a criminal charge. The notice and the documentation go to the landlord together.

Window: 60 days; the incident or documentation must fall within that window before the notice. The documentation the tenant offers must be dated no more than 60 days before the tenant's notice to the landlord. It is a staleness limit on the document rather than a deadline to act after the incident, so an older incident still counts if the order of protection or the charge documentation is recent enough.

Notice: 30 days; no more than that many days. The 30 days is an outer limit on the exit date, not a waiting period the tenant sets. To leave without liability for future rent and early-termination penalties or fees the tenant must give the landlord written notice requesting release, a mutually agreed release date within the next 30 days from the date of that notice, and one of the two accepted documents. The tenant must then vacate within 30 days of giving notice, or at another time the landlord and tenant agree. The release date is negotiated, which makes this right unusual: a landlord who will not agree a date leaves the tenant without one.

Rent owed: The tenant owes the rent payment for the full month in which the tenancy terminates, and any obligations already outstanding on the termination date. There is no proration for a mid-month exit.

Cost to the tenant: Nothing beyond that final month's rent and the outstanding obligations. The tenant vacates without liability for future rent and without early-termination penalties or fees.

Other tenants on the lease: the lease continues for the other tenants. The section says expressly that it does not release the other parties to the agreement from their obligations under it, so a co-tenant who stays remains bound on the original terms.

Locks: Lock changes are not addressed.

Later screening: no protection against reporting or characterization; a narrower bar applies. Neither chapter bars a landlord or a screening service from reporting or characterizing a termination taken under this right, and neither carries a general bar on denying housing because of victim status. What the sections do carry is narrower: the right does not authorize a landlord to end the tenancy and evict a residential tenant solely because the tenant or a household member is a victim, and where domestic abuse is the underlying offense for a termination only the perpetrator may be evicted, with victims, minor children under 18 and innocent occupants protected from eviction based solely on the abuse.

The landlord must keep the victim's documentation or status confidential.

Deadline to move out: The tenant must vacate within 30 days of giving notice, or at another time the landlord and tenant agree. That deadline is the one part of the section the parties may vary by agreement; everything else in it is non-waivable.

The landlord's side: Where domestic abuse is the underlying offense for a termination, the landlord may evict only the perpetrator, and the perpetrator stays financially liable for all amounts due even after being evicted or removed from the lease. The landlord may remove the perpetrator from the agreement and require the remaining adult tenants to qualify for and enter a new agreement for the rest of the present term. The victim and all adult tenants must agree in writing not to let the perpetrator return and to report a return immediately, and breaking that agreement is itself cause to end the tenancy as to the victim and every other tenant. The protection does not apply until the victim has been judicially granted an order of protection against the perpetrator for the specific incident, does not apply where the perpetrator is a child or dependent of a tenant, and falls away if the order of protection is dismissed or the section is not complied with. Nothing in it stops a landlord from evicting a victim for nonpayment of rent or another lease violation.

A tenant who is, or whose household member is, a victim of domestic abuse, sexual assault or stalking may end the lease without liability for future rent or early-termination penalties by giving the landlord written notice asking for release, agreeing a release date with the landlord within the next 30 days, and supplying either a valid order of protection issued after a hearing with a preponderance finding or documentation of a criminal charge based on a police report. The document must be dated no more than 60 days before the notice. The tenant owes the rent for the full month in which the tenancy ends plus anything already outstanding, and must vacate within 30 days of the notice or at an agreed later time. Other tenants on the agreement stay bound. The landlord may not reveal any identifying information about a tenant who has ended a tenancy this way without the tenant's written consent, unless the law or a court requires it. The right reaches only agreements entered into or renewed on or after July 1, 2021, and the section that applies depends on whether the county is inside the residential act.

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

Tennessee adds nothing to the federal Servicemembers Civil Relief Act. Neither landlord-tenant chapter mentions military service, and the state's military affairs title contains no servicemember lease provision at all; its only lease references are the Governor's power to acquire or lease land for the state. Searching every title of the code turned up just two state statutes that reference the federal act, and neither concerns a tenancy: one requires the return of funds where a court wrongly enters a default child-support decision against a protected servicemember, and the other stays a foreclosure or a repossession of secured goods where the service member gives the notice the federal act provides for. A Tennessee servicemember's lease-termination right is therefore the federal one alone.

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

Other grounds: One statewide ground and three others. A person who is permanently and totally disabled, as the state's public assistance law defines that phrase, may end a lease on their primary residence without incurring penalties and without owing rent after ceasing to occupy the property, if they are accepted as a resident of a public housing facility. The tenant presents written evidence of the acceptance and the landlord gives written acknowledgement of the termination. The right is lost where the current landlord has made significant modifications to the residence to address accessibility for people with a physical disability. No notice period is stated. Inside the residential act, a tenant may end the agreement where the landlord makes an unlawful entry, makes a lawful entry in an unreasonable manner, or makes repeated otherwise-lawful demands for entry that have the effect of unreasonably harassing the tenant, and may recover actual damages and reasonable attorney's fees. Also inside the act, where fire or casualty damages the unit so that its use is substantially impaired, meaning a governmental authority has deemed it unfit for human habitation, the tenant may vacate immediately and must give the landlord written notice within 14 days of the intention to terminate, in which case the agreement ends as of the date of vacating and prepaid rent and the deposit come back. Outside the act the casualty rule is older and weaker: where a leased building is destroyed or so injured as to be untenantable and unfit for occupancy through no fault of the tenant, the tenant may surrender possession without liability for rent afterwards, but only where no express written agreement to the contrary has been made. Ending a tenancy because the landlord will not repair, and protection against retaliation, are covered on the habitability page.

Two statutory shapes apply. Absence for a stated period ends the tenancy by presumption. The landlord serves a notice of belief and the tenant has a window to respond.

Answering the presumption or notice: On the second route the landlord must post the notice at the rental premises and also send it to the tenant by regular mail, postage prepaid, at the premises address. The notice must say that the landlord believes the tenant has abandoned the premises, that the landlord intends to re-enter and take possession unless the tenant makes contact within 10 days of the posting and mailing, that the landlord intends to remove the possessions and re-rent, and that there is a 30-day window to reclaim them, and it must give a telephone number and a mailing address for the landlord. If the tenant fails to make contact within the 10 days the landlord may re-enter and take possession. If the tenant does make contact within the 10 days and says they intend to remain in possession, the landlord must go back to the ordinary termination and possession rules and use the court process.

Inside the residential act two separate routes each make abandonment a prima facie fact. On the first, the tenant's unexplained or extended absence from the premises for 30 days or more without payment of rent as due is prima facie evidence of abandonment, and the landlord is then expressly authorized to re-enter and take possession, with no notice required. On the second, nonpayment of rent for 15 days past the due date together with other reasonable factual circumstances showing the tenant has permanently vacated, such as removing substantially all of the tenant's possessions and personal effects or voluntarily ending utility service, is also prima facie evidence, but the landlord must then post and mail the notice described above and wait out the 10-day response window. Abandonment matters because it is the gateway to lawful re-entry: the act bars a landlord from recovering possession by self-help except in the case of abandonment or surrender or as the act otherwise permits, and abandonment is also what starts the landlord's duty to re-rent at a fair rental. In the counties outside the act there is no statutory presumption and no notice-of-belief procedure; the common-law test governs, and the Court of Appeals has defined abandonment as an absolute relinquishment of the premises by the tenant evidenced by an act and an intent to abandon. What happens to possessions left behind is covered separately.

Inside the residential act the only form requirement for a termination notice is that it be in writing. The act's general notice rule is that a party has notice of a fact if that party has actual knowledge of it or has been given written notice, and that all parties must give written notice to the last known or designated address contained in the lease agreement. There is no order of methods, no posting requirement, no requirement of certified mail, and no added days for mailing anywhere in the chapter. In the counties outside the act no delivery rule is stated at all: the older chapter says only that notice is given by the landlord and counts from the date it is given. The rules for serving the summons that starts a possession case are covered on the eviction page. Email runs one way only: a landlord may send notices to a tenant by email where the tenant supplied an email address in the rental agreement (section 66-28-108), and the statute gives the tenant no matching route.

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

What the notice must contain: A no-cause termination notice inside the act must specify the operative date and nothing else: the periodic rental date for a month-to-month tenancy, or the termination date for a week-to-week tenancy. The act prescribes contents for two other documents — the notice of belief of abandonment, which must carry four statements plus a telephone number and mailing address, and the three-day notice for a violent act or a dangerous condition, which must detail the violation and takes effect only from the date the tenant receives it. In the counties outside the act no content requirement is stated for a no-cause notice.

Alternate address: Inside the act, written notice goes to the last known or designated address contained in the lease agreement, so an address a tenant names in the lease is the one the landlord must use.

Tennessee has no state counterpart to the federal Servicemembers Civil Relief Act, so that act is the whole of a servicemember's lease-termination right here, and the federal Violence Against Women Act reaches only covered federally assisted housing and creates no right to break a lease. Two Tennessee provisions do turn on federal housing law and change the state answer. The residential act steps aside for federally regulated units owned by a government body or a nonprofit, to the extent the federal regulation conflicts with state law. And the 60-day notice for an older tenant is keyed to federal definitions: the facility must provide housing for older persons as federal fair-housing law defines that, and must receive federal financial assistance that subjects it to section 504 of the federal Rehabilitation Act.

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 Tennessee appellate decision construes the CARES Act's 30-day notice for covered dwellings, and neither landlord-tenant chapter writes the requirement into state law. The federal provision applies of its own force at a covered property, and it is longer than every Tennessee notice period a landlord would otherwise use for nonpayment. (Appellate picture read as of September 4, 2026.)

Smith v. Holt, 29 Tenn. App. 31, 193 S.W.2d 100 (Tennessee Court of Appeals, 1945; residential lease; bears on ending a periodic tenancy): In an unlawful detainer case over a house occupied as a dwelling, the court held that a periodic tenancy arising from a holdover with the landlord's consent lasts indefinitely and neither party may end it without notice equal to a full period: six months before the end of the year on a year-to-year tenancy, and a quarter, a month or a week before the end of the period on a quarter, month or week tenancy. The court also held that the unlawful detainer statute's rule that no notice to quit need be given does not dispense with the notice needed to end a periodic tenancy, and that a landlord may treat a holdover either as an unlawful detainer or as creating a new tenancy for another like term, with the tenant bound for that full term.

Robb Thompson v. Brian W. Groves, No. W2012-01764-COA-R3-CV (Tennessee Court of Appeals, 2013; residential lease; bears on ending a periodic tenancy): In a residential case from a county inside the residential landlord and tenant act, the court held that the act's requirement of 30 days' notice before ending a month-to-month lease protects the parties' rights under the lease but does not affect the general sessions court's authority to hear a detainer action. A failure to give the notice affects the relief available to the landlord rather than the court's power to decide the case.

Hailey v. Cunningham, 654 S.W.2d 392 (Supreme Court of Tennessee, 1983; arose from a commercial lease; bears on the duty to re-let): The court applied a reasonable-efforts mitigation standard to a lessor after the premises were abandoned by a third assignee, and held that the evidence did not preponderate against the trial judge's finding that the lessors had made sufficient reasonable efforts to mitigate their damages. The lease was of a commercial building, and the decision assumes the duty rather than announcing it; it is the root citation later Tennessee courts use for the rule.

Jaffe v. Bolton, 817 S.W.2d 19 (Tennessee Court of Appeals, 1991; arose from a commercial lease; bears on the duty to re-let): The court stated the rule in terms: in this jurisdiction a landlord is under a duty to mitigate damages upon the abandonment of the premises by the tenant. It also fixed the limit, holding that a tenant cannot refuse to give up possession and at the same time claim the landlord failed to mitigate, and that a landlord need not forcibly eject tenants in order to re-let. Abandonment requires an absolute relinquishment of the premises evidenced by an act and an intent to abandon. The lease was of commercial premises, a restaurant and nightclub.

Jones v. VCPHCS I, LLC, No. W2016-02142-COA-R3-CV (Tennessee Court of Appeals, 2018; arose from a commercial lease; bears on the end of a fixed term): Restating the older rule for modern practice, the court held that a periodic tenancy continues automatically for successive periods unless a party gives proper notice, that notice to end a year-to-year tenancy must be given six months before the end of the year, and that by accepting a holdover tenant's rent the landlord consents to a new periodic tenancy for another like term unless the original lease provides otherwise. The premises were commercial: office space in Memphis leased to a behavioral-health company.