<prompt> Human: moved in with my girlfriend at the time years ago, and my mother cosigned the initial one year lease that both my gf and i were on. one year lease goes month-to-month indefinitely upon completion of original term. lived together for 3 years, broke up, i moved out, and upon doing so emailed the apartment broker to tell him that i was out, she was staying, and to remove me and my mother from the lease effective immediately. he responded that the only way to get off the lease is both vacate or gf volunteer to do a new lease. i replied with as of today, July 1, 2014, my mother and I are off the lease . . . gf is staying . . . the apartment is now her responsibility as she is choosing to stay there when her co-tenant has left and co-signer is no longer the guarantor for the month to month lease. broker sends me an email today, two years later, that the rent is unpaid and he has no choice but to hire a lawyer to collect or proceed to evict unless account is paid in full immediately. This scenario uncorrected will leave mother legally on the hook for all legal fees and unpaid rent. what are my rights and how do i navigate this? i live in California.edit 1: contextedit 2:ouch! would be nice to hear from a lawyer on this. checked the lease i kept a copy and termination clause is vague as their is no contingency for one tenant leaving and one staying, it only states that notice is necessary. nothing about signing a new lease. broker does have a history of dishing out misinformation and intimidation. he is offering to wipe debt clean if ex vacates the premises. how do you make someone leave? should i get a lawyer?one good thing i did see is that my moms signature is not on the lease! nbsp;update: nbsp;not liable! spoke with a lawyer and it appears that uBrave29 got it right. as per my termination clause, all that was required was notice. under this type of termination clause, once somebody gives notice, the lease is broken for everyone. after 60 days, if not vacated by all tenants, landlord has the option to evict, which in this case he clearly chose not to. the onus was on my ex and the broker to come to a new agreement. you cant just stay because you dont feel like leaving. i forwarded lawyers info to the broker and have not heard from him since.lessons learned: never sign a joint leasenever cosign for anyone. this could have went wrong in a number of different ways, and i could have easily been on the other side of the coin. i was lucky to dodge this bullet. apparently brokers can say whatever they feel like, theyre not lawyers, and they will use whatever means they can which includes threats and misinformation to get what they want. their job is to get as much money as they possibly can for whatever it is they are selling. always read the fine print.post to the correct subreddit. def learned my lesson here. this post was probably better suited for rlegaladvice. thanks to everyone who was actually helpful and offered something of use. its nice to know that despite being overrun by trolls, there are actually some critical thinkers using reddit.Assistant: Im I property management and this happened recently. You were originally on the lease, sorry but you are still liable as is your mom because no new terms were met. You cant dictate to the property owner anything. We had 4 brothers in a duplex, one decided not to pay rent any more so we started evicting all four of them. Guess what, they literally had to drag the last brother out of the unit kicking and screaming so they didnt all get evictions on there records even though the other 3 brothers wanted to leave before evictions started. This was in California. You could always plead your case in court but it wont be pretty.Human: im not sure if these scenarios are identical. i didnt decide to stop paying rent. i gave notice on a month-to-month lease and left. two years ago. i didnt need new terms.  <response>: YOU didnt need new terms. SHE did. She didnt and now youre the one paying the price. 