People leasing to a son, a daughter, a parent or a sibling usually assume the arrangement sits outside the rules, because it started as a favor rather than a business.
Renting a home to a relative does not automatically put the arrangement outside Arizona’s landlord and tenant law. The Act contains a list of arrangements it does not reach, and being related to your tenant is not on it. Nothing on that list turns on informality, on a favor, on a rent below the market, or on how the two of you describe what you are doing.
What decides it is something else, and it is worth knowing before you read the rest of this page.
When the Act Applies, and When the Answer Is Less Clear
The Act says it applies to the rental of dwelling units. Two definitions carry most of the weight.
A rental agreement covers agreements that are written, spoken or implied by law, embodying the terms and conditions concerning the use and occupancy of a home. Nothing there requires a lawyer, a form or a signature, which is why an arrangement made at a kitchen table can be a rental agreement. A tenant is a person entitled under a rental agreement to occupy a home to the exclusion of others.
For the ordinary version of this arrangement — your relative in a house or apartment of their own, on terms the two of you talked about, paying something — both questions answer yes, and everything on the rest of this page applies exactly as it would to a stranger.
Two common family situations are harder, and Arizona has not settled either one.
If Your Relative Pays No Rent at All
The adult child who moved back in, the parent in the casita, the brother staying until he gets sorted out. No rent, no term, nothing anybody would call an agreement.
Arizona does not answer this one cleanly. The definition of a rental agreement says nothing about money at all, which suggests an arrangement can be one without rent. But the Act applies to the rental of homes, and rent is defined as payments made in full consideration for the premises, which suggests the opposite. A good deal of the Act’s machinery — the deposit ceiling set as a multiple of rent, the five-day notice for nonpayment — assumes rent exists. The chapter never says which way this goes.
The gap matters, because the answer decides which set of rules you are in.
If the Act covers the arrangement, ending it takes thirty days in writing for a month-to-month tenancy, and a case brought under the Act is a special detainer action. If the Act does not cover it, a different and older part of Arizona law is what is left, and it works differently: a month-to-month lease there ends on ten days notice from the landlord, and no notice at all is required where rent has gone unpaid. Removing somebody who stays on runs through a forcible detainer action, which reaches a tenant at will or by sufferance who holds over after a written demand for possession.
The two court procedures overlap a good deal. What differs is the grounds and the notices, and those are the part a landlord gets wrong.
So this is one to take to a lawyer before you serve anything, rather than after. Serving the wrong notice usually means starting over some weeks later, from a worse position than you began.
If Your Relative Is Living in Your Home
A bedroom in the house you live in, with a kitchen and a bathroom you both use, is the other case Arizona has not settled. Living on the property does not put you outside the Act. What is unclear is whether a relative sharing everything but a bedroom is a tenant in the statutory sense at all, and the answer changes what you owe each other.
That question, and the roomer definition people reach for when answering it, are worked through on leasing a room in your own home.
The rest of this page is about the case the Act plainly covers.
This page is written for the landlord. If you are the tenant, the guide for tenants covers the same ground from your side.
What the Law Supplies When Nothing Was Written Down
Nothing written down is not the same as nothing agreed, and the difference decides most of what follows.
The Term, If You Never Fixed One
An agreement can fix a definite term out loud. Where you and your relative did not fix one at all, Arizona supplies the answer: the tenancy is month to month, unless your relative is a roomer paying by the week, in which case it is week to week.
So somebody who moved in “for a while”, with nothing said about how long, holds a month-to-month tenancy with the notice rules that go with it, running from the day they arrived.
The Rent, and Why the Fair-Rental-Value Rule Rarely Helps
Where there is no rental agreement, the tenant owes the fair rental value for using and occupying the property. Families reading that often assume it applies to them because nothing was signed.
Usually it does not. A rental agreement in Arizona includes an oral one, so a conversation about paying four hundred a month is an agreement, and four hundred a month is the rent. The fair-rental-value rule is for the case where there was never any agreement about rent at all — rarer than it sounds, and hard to prove either way.
The practical problem with the friendly number is proving it later. If one of you remembers four hundred and the other remembers six hundred, there may be no document showing which it was.
There Is No Late Fee
Arizona supplies no default figure, and the Act touches the subject at a single moment: a tenancy behind on rent being put back on foot. The fee it describes at that moment has to be reasonable, and has to have been in the agreement all along. With no written agreement, there is nothing to point at. Rent, fees and charges covers what the Act does and does not say about that.
The Deposit Rules Still Apply
If you took money — even informally, even described as “something toward any damage” — it is a deposit, and none of the deposit rules bend for a relative. The cap, the labeling, the itemized list and its deadline all apply exactly as they would for a stranger, and they are set out on security deposits.
The move-in documentation is particularly useful in a family arrangement, because paperwork is what people skip when everybody is getting along. Three years later it can be genuinely hard to remember whether the worn carpet, the damaged cabinet or the mark on the wall was there at the start.
Ending a Family Tenancy Still Takes the Proper Steps
Almost nobody sets up a family tenancy expecting to end it. Then a house needs selling, or a relationship shifts, or the money stops arriving — and the law does not soften because the parties are related.
Thirty days’ notice in writing ends a month-to-month tenancy, and those thirty days are counted to a rental date, not to the day the notice goes out. A conversation over dinner is not a notice, no matter how clearly it was put. Where rent is unpaid the period drops to five days, and what you send has to say both that the rent is unpaid and that you mean to end the tenancy.
If the notice runs out and your relative is still there, the notice by itself does not move anybody. Possession comes back through a court: a special detainer action, heard in the justice court covering the property, with a summons, a hearing set within days, and your son or your mother named as the defendant.
It is the same action any landlord uses, and ending a tenancy sets it out. It is also the point at which a written agreement earns its keep, because what a court needs is evidence of what was agreed.
What you cannot do is skip that and change the locks, and the temptation is strongest here, where the whole situation feels domestic rather than legal. A landlord who removes or excludes a tenant unlawfully, or cuts off the electricity, gas or water to force the issue, owes that tenant the greater of two months’ rent or twice the actual damages. The tenant can recover possession as well.
Be Careful About Accepting Part of the Rent
Two rules here, and both of them catch the person trying to be accommodating.
Taking part of the rent keeps your position only where your relative signs a writing then and there, recording the terms and the date the balance comes due. Without that writing, accepting what your son can afford this month can undo a notice you have already served.
And taking rent from somebody you know is already in default gives up your right to end the tenancy over that breach. Later breaches survive. The one in front of you does not.
Both rules have conditions worth reading before the money changes hands rather than after. Rent, fees and charges sets them out.
Why a Written Agreement Helps the Relationship
The usual objection is that asking a relative to sign a lease signals distrust. In practice it tends to work the other way.
Writing it down settles the awkward questions while the two of you still agree about the answers, instead of reconstructing them once a disagreement has started. How much is the rent. When it is due. How long the arrangement is meant to run. How much notice either of you gives. Who takes care of which expenses.
That last one comes with a limit. Arizona puts a set of maintenance and habitability duties on the landlord, and an agreement cannot simply hand them all to the tenant. There are narrow conditions under which some can be moved across, and they call for a writing and something given in exchange. Repairs and habitability sets out which duties those are.
Writing it down also puts your relative on the same footing as any other tenant if things go wrong, which is generally what both sides would have wanted if asked in advance. What belongs in the document itself is on what a lease must say, and the clauses Arizona refuses to enforce are on what a lease cannot say.
One Thing to Check Elsewhere
Leasing to a relative below market rent can affect how the arrangement is treated for tax, and that is a question for an accountant rather than for this page. Tax treatment is a separate subject from the landlord and tenant rules described here.
Where These Rules Come From
Arizona’s laws are collected in a set called the Arizona Revised Statutes, usually shortened to A.R.S. The number that follows points to one section of it.
You do not need these numbers to use this page. They are here so that you, or a lawyer you hire, can check the exact wording. Each one links to the official text on the Arizona Legislature’s website, which opens in a new tab.
- A.R.S. 33-1304 is the whole of the Act’s scope rule, in one sentence: the chapter applies to the rental of dwelling units.
- A.R.S. 33-1308 is the list of arrangements the Act does not reach. There are seven, none of them about family, and the section’s opening words withhold all seven from any arrangement built to sidestep it.
- A.R.S. 33-1310 is the definitions, and three of them decide the questions above. Paragraph 13 defines a rental agreement to include the written, the oral and the implied by law, with no mention of payment. Paragraph 17 defines a tenant as somebody entitled to occupy to the exclusion of others. Paragraph 4 defines a dwelling unit, and carries the common-household wording. Paragraph 14 is the roomer, and paragraph 12 is rent.
- A.R.S. 33-1314 is terms and conditions. Subsection B is the fair rental value rule, which applies in the absence of a rental agreement. Subsection D is the default term where none was fixed.
- A.R.S. 33-1321 is security deposits, including the ceiling covering security however denominated and the paperwork due at move-in.
- A.R.S. 33-1324 is where the maintenance duties live. Subsections C and D set the limited terms on which a tenant may take some of them over.
- A.R.S. 33-1375 sets the notice for a periodic tenancy, which is the kind an undocumented family arrangement turns out to be.
- A.R.S. 33-1368 holds two things used here: the shorter notice where rent has gone unpaid, and, in subsection B, the reinstatement rule — the one point at which the Act speaks about late fees.
- A.R.S. 33-1371 is the section behind both part-payment rules — what a landlord has to get signed before taking part of the rent, and what is given up by taking rent from somebody already in breach.
- A.R.S. 33-1377 is the special detainer action, the court case brought under the Act. It borrows most of its procedure from the general forcible detainer rules.
- A.R.S. 33-1367 is what a tenant recovers where a landlord removes or excludes them without going to court, or cuts off an essential service: possession, or termination, plus the greater of two months’ rent or twice the actual damages.
- A.R.S. 33-341 and A.R.S. 12-1173 are the older machinery referred to above, which is what remains if the Act does not cover an arrangement. 33-341, subsection B, is the ten days for a month-to-month lease and the absence of any notice requirement for nonpayment. 12-1173 is forcible detainer, and paragraph 1 reaches a tenant at will or by sufferance who holds over after a written demand for possession.
Common Questions
Does Arizona landlord-tenant law apply when leasing to family?
Being related to your tenant is not on the Act's list of arrangements it does not reach, so the relationship by itself changes nothing. What decides coverage is whether there is an agreement about the use and occupancy of a home, and whether your relative is entitled to occupy it to the exclusion of others. For a relative in a place of their own, on terms you talked about, the answer is normally yes.
What if my relative pays no rent at all?
Arizona does not answer that cleanly. The definition of a rental agreement says nothing about money, which points one way; the Act applies to the rental of homes and defines rent as payment in full consideration for the premises, which points the other. The chapter never resolves it, and the answer decides which notice periods and which court action apply. Ask a lawyer before serving anything.
Does the Act apply if my relative lives in my own home?
Living on the property does not put you outside the Act. What is unsettled is whether somebody sharing your kitchen and bathroom is a tenant in the statutory sense, since the definition asks about occupying to the exclusion of others and Arizona never explains the phrase. Leasing a room in your own home works the question through.
Do I need a written lease to lease to a relative?
Not legally. What an unwritten arrangement costs you is the ability to prove what was agreed. It also costs you any choice about length, since Arizona supplies a month-to-month tenancy where nothing was fixed, and the footing for a late fee, which the Act describes only as one already in the agreement.
If we never agreed a rent, does the law set one?
Only where there was genuinely no agreement about rent at all, in which case the tenant owes the fair rental value. A spoken agreement is still an agreement, so a conversation about four hundred a month makes four hundred a month the rent. The real difficulty is proof, not the rule.
How do I end a tenancy with a family member?
The same way as with anybody else. A month-to-month tenancy takes thirty days' written notice, counted to a rental date rather than to the day you send it, and unpaid rent drops that to five days. A conversation over dinner is not notice. If your relative stays past the notice, only a court can put them out, through a special detainer action in the justice court.
Can I take a deposit from a family member?
Yes, and nothing about the deposit rules bends for a relative — the ceiling, the requirement that a nonrefundable fee's purpose be recorded in writing, and the closing account with its deadline all run as usual. Money handed over informally and called something toward damage is still a deposit.
Does accepting part of the rent from a relative cause problems?
It can. Taking part of the rent preserves your position only where your tenant signs something at the time setting out the terms and the day the balance falls due. And accepting rent while you know your tenant is in default gives up your right to terminate for that particular breach.