Landlord’s duties in drafting an eviction notice and the scope of the burden of proof in the consequent eviction lawsuit just got enlarged by the decision handed down from the Appellate Division of the Los Angeles Superior Court. The case is Colonial Manor, Inc. v. Reyes, No. 24APLC00316, as modified May 19, 2026. The landlord now has to account for a tenant’s spouse, to see if he or she should be treated as an original tenant, even if the spouse moved in years later.
A tenant had occupied a Santa Monica rent-controlled apartment for many years, at a rate of $666 per month, his rent staying low thanks to the Santa Monica Rent Control Ordinance. This tenant’s future wife (the defendant) joined him in that apartment many years after the tenancy started. The couple lived there for at least a year prior to their marriage in 2022, and continued residing there thereafter. In 2023, the tenant passed away.
Not surprisingly, the landlord then served the widow with a rent-increase notice, setting the rent at $3,500 a month. When the newly-set rent was unpaid, the landlord served a three-day notice to pay $3,500 or quit, and then filed an unlawful detainer. This scenario is not at all uncommon: landlords are literally mandated to act quick on changing terms of the lease following the departure of an original tenant, or they risk missing that opportunity for good. “Sleeping on the switch” and accepting a rent payment at the old rate from a subsequent occupant works against a landlord, and so it is standard practice for the property owners to act without delay, else they would face the waiver/estoppel argument. (See, e.g., Cobb v. San Francisco Residential Rent Stabilization & Arbitration Bd. (2002) 98 Cal.App.4th 345 [a child]; Parkmerced Co. v. San Francisco Rent Stabilization & Arbitration Bd. (1989) 215 Cal.App.3d 490 [an adult sibling]; T & A Drolapas & Sons, LP v. San Francisco Residential Rent Stabilization & Arbitration Bd. (2015) 238 Cal.App.4th 646 [a child]; but see, Mosser Cos. v. San Francisco Rent Stabilization and Arbitration Board (2015) 233 Cal.App.4th 505 [where son moved in as a minor and did not pay rent, held not protected]; Danger Panda, LLC v. Launiu (2017) 10 Cal.App.5th 502 [a minor].) In San Francisco, it is in the Rent Board’s Rules that a landlord risks a waiver of a right to increase the rent rate on a subsequent occupant if that landlord did not act within 90 days from learning about the original tenant’s vacating. (SF Rules & Regulations, Rule 6.14, subds. (c)(2), (c)(3); see also Rules 1.21, 5.10, 5.12.)
Surprising was that the trial court entered judgment for the defendant, and the reviewing court affirmed. And even doubled-down on its position, while modifying the decision to its current version.
The landlord argued the ability to raise rent to its market level under the Costa-Hawkins Act, Civil Code section 1954.53. The defendant countered that she was a tenant, not a subtenant, even though she moved in years later. Whenever a tenant prevails on proving her status as an original occupant, a market-level rent increase attempt will fail, as it happened in this case. Colonial Manor was decided under the Santa Monica ordinance, but the outcome would be the same in any eviction-controlled jurisdiction.
The court concluded that this defendant was not a sublessee or an assignee, but a spouse of an original occupant, against whom a rent increase to the market level is not authorized under the Costa-Hawkins. The court arrived to that outcome . . . through the Family Code, particularly section 914, because the rent obligation ran from the original tenant to the landlord in relation to possession to the premises, “mak[ing] each spouse personally liable for debts incurred for necessities of life during each spouse’s lifetime.” (Colonial Manor, fn. 9.)
The spouse was found not to be a sublessee, because a sublease is a contract that transfers a portion of the tenant’s leasehold interest with a future right of reentry (Cobb v. San Francisco Residential Rent Stabilization & Arbitration Bd. (2002) 98 Cal.App.4th 345, 352), and there was no evidence the original tenant transferred any portion of his leasehold to his spouse or that she ever paid rent to her husband.
Because the landlord knew of the spouse’s living at the property for years, the court found it to be an implied tenancy at-will. (Id., p. 11.) The court relied on Borden v. Stiles (2023) 92 Cal.App.5th 337, 348, for the proposition that “[a] permissive occupation of real estate, where no rent is reserved or paid and no time agreed on to limit the occupation, is a tenancy at will.” Santa Monica ordinance includes a tenant at-will in its definition of a “tenant” covered under that ordinance. (SMRCCA, art. XVIII, § 1801.) The San Francisco ordinance does not have this exact language in its corresponding definition (SFRO, Sec. 37.2(t)), but it includes a tenancy under an oral agreement, and the Parkmerced decision observed that “One may become a tenant at will or a periodic tenant under an invalid lease, or without any lease at all, by occupancy with [landlord’s] consent.” (Parkmerced at 495, citing Ellingson v. Walsh, O’Connor & Barneson (1940) 15 Cal.2d 673, 675.) The presence of consent is what a tenant would argue to get to the oral-agreement and the tenancy-at-will territory. The length of the spouse’s presence at the property evidently played in as a factor as well.
Also to keep in mind is the court’s treatment to the notice’s language. The case’s rent-increase notice itself identified defendant as “the tenant who is in possession of the premises,” referring in the same breath to “your tenancy of the above designated premises”; and the follow-up three-day notice alleged defendant was delinquent in rent payments “pursuant to the lease or rental agreement under which you hold the possession.” The choice of words did not help the landlord. (Colonial Manor at 11.) And footnote 11 there is even scarier: it took in the acknowledgment of the future spouse’s presence at the property as a caregiver as a further indication of a tenancy consent.
Finding the defendant as an at-will tenant by an implied agreement made her to avoid the exemption parameters of section 1954.53, subdivision (d)(2). The court drew on Mosser, Parkmerced, and DeZerega v. Meggs (2000) 83 Cal.App.4th 28, for holding that Costa-Hawkins decontrol is not triggered when a person occupies the premises with the owner’s permission as a continuation of the original occupancy. The court then found that plaintiff failed to overcome its burden to establish that the SMRCCA is inimical to section 1954.53. The court doubled-down on the burden part in modifying the opinion on May 19. (Item 4.)
The implications go beyond just the rent-controlled tenancies. A statewide long-term cohabitant of a named tenant, whose presence the landlord has known and acquiesced in over time, can be argued to be an at-will tenant in her own right. I don’t even see why the argument would stop at just the marriage/family law application, it may perhaps include other similar co-obligations, thus extending into the realm of commercial tenancies.
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