Importance of having your Lease Agreements prepared and regularly reviewed by a Lawyer

Client A was the Landlord for a commercial property which was leased to a company. The Lease commenced in 2021.

In April 2025 the tenant ceased making monthly Lease payments in accordance with the Lease. The Landlord attempted to recover the unpaid Lease amounts from the tenant directly, with no luck.

The client then came to us to assist in getting the tenant to make payment of all outstanding amounts under the Lease. We reviewed the tenant details and undertook searches to confirm the identity of the tenant company, only to find that the company had been de-registered in April 2025. This meant technically the Lease did not have a tenant.

Further to this, upon reviewing the Lease, the Landlord did not request the Director’s of the tenant company to sign Personal Guarantees at the time they signed the Lease, meaning that the Landlord could not demand payment for unpaid monies of the Lease from the Director’s directly either.

Result: The client was advised that without personal guarantees from the Directors of the tenant company and the fact that the tenant company was now de-registered, the client had very little recourse to recover the outstanding monies owing.

We wrote to the directors of the tenant company, who luckily, were obliging and agreed to pay the outstanding amounts owing.

This highlighted how crucial it is to have Leases prepared or reviewed by a property lawyer. The result could have been very different for this client and could have lost thousands of dollars had the directors not been obliging.