The clause résolutoire lets a lease end automatically when the tenant fails to meet certain obligations. Until now, each landlord wrote it in their own words. The template now fixes the first paragraph. In French, it reads:
« Le contrat de location est résilié de plein droit pour défaut de paiement du loyer ou des charges aux termes convenus ou pour non versement du dépôt de garantie. La clause de résiliation de plein droit ne produit effet que six semaines après la date d'un commandement de payer demeuré infructueux. »
In plain English: the lease ends by operation of law if the rent, the charges or the security deposit are not paid. But only six weeks after a formal order to pay, served by a commissaire de justice, has gone unanswered.
The six-week period is not new. It has been in Article 24 of the Loi n° 89-462 du 6 juillet 1989 since 29 July 2023. What is new is that the lease must now say it in these words.
The template then allows optional grounds, which the parties may add:
• no tenant insurance, effective one month after a formal order;
• nuisance to neighbours, when established by a final court decision;
• for dwellings under the principal-residence easement, failure to live there as a main home.
A landlord cannot add any other ground. Article 4 of the 1989 law treats it as unwritten.
