renewing lease while tenants in process of divorcing, looking for insight

[Kevin Zhang]

Hello everyone!

As a small landlord owning just a handful of rental properties, I never faced this situation before: tenants (a family of 5) are divorcing.

We already passed the original 12-month lease renewal date, and we are in the automatic month-to-month right now as the original lease stated. At the time the lease was about to the point of renewal, I sent out a lease renewal to both of the husband and wife, the husband signed right away but the wife didn't, the wife didn't comment and didn't reach out to me. So we ended up without a formal renewal of a 12-month lease but started the automatic month-to-month lease extension.

Husband insisted to remove the wife off the lease and get the lease renewed for another 12 months, but I don't think I can do it without a formal, at least an email confirmation from the wife, and probably more official like an addendum requires all parties to sign).

If we finally have the consent from the wife to take her off from the lease, then the next question is if I still need to have the husband to re-apply/re-qualify for the new lease. Well, the husband made 90% of the income of the household, but the custody situation and negative impact by a divorce are just an unknown.

Any thoughts on what you probably would do if you are at my situation, and what would be potential risk down the road...

BTW, I am in orange county, CA, try to make it clear and the law in CA is usually in favor of tenants.

Thank you so much!!! really appreciate any thoughts!

Kevin