Q The maintenance team at my shopping center occasionally forgets to make very minor repairs. I'm working with them to make sure that they're more diligent about these things. But in the meantime, a tenant is threatening to stop paying rent, and even terminate its lease. It says that I've breached the lease by failing to keep up the common areas as I'm required to under the lease. I've suspected that this t...

Your lease will specify under what circumstances you and the tenant may terminate the lease. It'll also spell out the procedure you must follow to do so—for example, by giving 30, 60, or 90 days' written notice. If the provisions in your lease that govern termination rights are drafted ambiguously, you may be left with a more limited right to get out of the deal than you intended. For example, you might intend to give yourself an ongoing termination right ...

Commercial tenants typically want the right to “go dark”—that is, stop operating while continuing to pay rent—if their businesses aren't generating enough revenue. “Going dark” can save tenants the cost of stocking and staffing the space they rent. But if you give a tenant the right to go dark, you may want to carve out a recapture right for yourself—allowing you to take back the space and replace the tenant.