End the Lease on PCS or Deployment Orders — and the Spouse or Dependant Can Do It Too
Washington’s residential landlord-tenant act lets a tenant who is a member of the armed forces, including the national guard and armed forces reserves — or that tenant’s spouse or dependant — end a rental agreement on less than the usual 20 days’ written notice where permanent change of station or deployment orders do not allow 20 days’ notice.
Verified August 23, 2026
What this benefit is
Washington’s residential landlord-tenant act lets a tenant who is a member of the armed forces, including the national guard and armed forces reserves — or that tenant’s spouse or dependant — end a rental agreement on less than the usual 20 days’ written notice where permanent change of station or deployment orders do not allow 20 days’ notice.
What it's worth: Release from the rental agreement on less than 20 days’ written notice
- The condition is specific: the orders themselves must not allow a 20-day written notice. Where 20 days’ notice is possible, the ordinary 20-day rule in the same section applies instead.
- The provision covers a member of the armed forces, including the national guard and armed forces reserves, and the tenant’s spouse or dependent.
- The section is about the notice period. It does not, in the sentence read this session, address what happens to rent already owed or to the deposit, and no dollar value is claimed here.
Who is entitled to it
- You are inside the window the state civil relief act protects.
- You are a tenant who is a member of the armed forces, the national guard or the armed forces reserves.
- The tenant’s spouse or dependent is named in the same sentence as the member.
- Your home is in Washington.
Not sure whether that describes you?
Answer a few questions about this benefit specifically — we only ask what this one actually depends on, and we stop as soon as we know.
How to claim it
Deadline: As soon as the orders are received- 1Give the notice in writing and date it. The section is written around written notice, and the date is what the shortened period is measured from.
- 2Attach the permanent change of station or deployment orders. The shortened notice depends on the orders not allowing 20 days, so the orders are the proof.
- 3Give 20 days if the orders allow it. The short-notice route exists for orders that do not leave 20 days — using it when 20 days were available invites a dispute you do not need.
- 4Do not wait for the landlord to agree. This is a statutory right of the tenant, not a concession the landlord grants.
- 5Settle rent and the deposit separately and in writing. This provision addresses the notice period; what is owed up to the end date and how the deposit is returned are governed elsewhere in the act.
- 6A spouse or dependant on the lease can give the notice in their own name — the statute names them alongside the member.
- Form
- Written notice to the landlord, with the orders
- File with
- Your landlord
- No renewal
- Once granted it does not need renewing.
Sources
- authority · statuteRCW 59.18.200 — tenancy from month to month or for rental period; notice (subsection (1)(b): "Any tenant who is a member of the armed forces, including the national guard and armed forces reserves, or that tenant’s spouse or dependent, may end a rental agreement with less than 20 days’ written notice if the tenant receives permanent change of station or deployment orders that do not allow a 20-day written notice.")
- operating · statuteRCW 38.42.020 — applicability of the Washington service members’ civil relief act, which independently protects a service member and dependants in any judicial or administrative proceeding in the state from the date the order is received until 180 days after release from military service
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