<prompt> Human: I live in a 5 bedroom apartment at a college town. Our group of 5 originally signed a lease last spring before school let out. One of our roommates instead dropped out of school and joined the military. He told us we wouldnt have to worry about him not paying as the military would cover the remainder of his lease. 3-4 months go by and a maintenance man shows up at our door looking for our missing roommate saying he hasnt received any money from him for the entire period. Im unable to contact his directly right now and now our rental company is saying they are trying to move in a random roommate to cover their loss.Is this is breach of the lease? I signed a lease with 4 other peoples signatures on the paper, not this random person. I never agreed to live with this random person. Personally i dont want to live with anyone I dont know if i can trust or of their hygiene and other habits so if they decide to force this tenant on us, is the lease nullified?Assistant: Your side of the contract broke the lease by not paying rent. If you dont like the remedy they proposed, make a counter-offer.Human: The section in the lease about paying the rent is on an individual level. It doesnt say the whole group pays the lump sum. It says each person pays their share of the rent to so and so by a certain date.Assistant: Read the lease carefully. Presumably it should say what happens here.This is an odd lease... usually the lease is either everyone owes the full amount and how you split it up is between you or there is a separate lease for each person and you are legally renting a room with access to common areas.Your lease appears to be you are renting a room, but without a separate lease for each person. I do not know how this will work out... perhaps there are some laws where you are that both make this possible and let the lease you all signed actually act like each of you had signed a separate lease which is how the landlord appears to be treating this.That said if you were to each offer to pay 25 more to cover the missing person or would get someone else on your own to rent it Im guessing the landlord would go for it.Human: Okay so we are separately and jointly responsible for lease but the thing is our roommate who joined the military legally broke the lease so hes no longer responsible for any rent but does that mean the rest of us are responsible to pick up his rent? Lol this is just a really shitty situation  <response>: Okay so we are separately and jointly responsible for leaseYes, that means that all 5 of you are individually responsible for the entire lease, i.e. if 1 person fails to pay, the other 4 are responsible. You should be happy that the leasing company is trying to help you find a 5th person, and not just asking you guys for the money which you are legally obliged to pay.Your alternatives here are to a pay for said roommate or b find someone else to replace him that the leasing company will accept. 