RENOUNCING PROBATE. Giving up the right to be executor of a will, wherein he has been appointed to that office, by refusing to take out probate of such will. 1 Will. Exec. 230, 231. It is usually done by writing filed in the probate office.
RENT (Lat. reditus, a return). A return or compensation for the possession of some corporeal inheritance. A certain profit, ei ther in money, provisions, or labor, issuing out of lands and tenements, in return for their use.
The compensation, either in money, provi sions, chattels, or labor, received by the owner of the soil from the occupant there of. Jacks. & Gross, Landl. & T. § 38; Woodf. Landl. & T. 375.
It has been held that a rent may issue out of lands and tenements corporeal, and also, out of them and their furniture, in this case a dairy farm with its stock and utensils; Appeal of Vetter, 99 Pa. 52. See, as to fur nished Jodgings, 5 B. & P. 224 ; 5 Co. 16 b.
Some of its common-law properties are that it must be a profit to the proprietor, certain in its character, or capable of being reduced to a certainty, issuing yearly, that is, periodically, out of the thing granted, and not be part, of the land or thing itself ; Co. Litt. 47; 2 131a. Coro. 41.
At common law there were, three species of rent: rent service, where the tenant held his land by fealty, homage, or other cor poral service and a certain rent to which the right of distress was necessarily inci dent ; 3 Kent *461; Kenege v. Elliot, 9 Watts (Pa.) 258 ; rent charge, which was a reserva tion of rent, with a clause authorizing its collection by distress ; and rent seek, where there was no such clause, but the rent could only be collected by an ordinary action at law as by a writ of annuity or writ of as size. These distinctions, however, for all practical purposes, have become obsolete, in consequence of various statutes both in Eng land and in this country, allowing every kind of rent to be distrained for without distinc tion. See Tayl. Landl. & T. § 370; FEUDAL LAW.
The payment of rent is incident to every tenancy where the relation of landlord and tenant subsists, except as to mere tenancies at will or by sufferance, where this relation cannot be said to exist. And no tenant can resist a demand for rent unless he shows that he has been evicted or become otherwise entitled to quit the premises, and has actual ly done so, before the rent in question be came due. By the strictness of the common law, when a tenant has once made an agree ment to pay rent, nothing will excuse him from continuing to pay, although the prem ises should be reduced to a ruinous condi tion by some unavoidable accident of fire, flood, or tempest ; Fowler v. Bott, 6 Mass. 63; Bussman v. Ganster, 72 Pa. 285; Cowell v. Lumley, 39 Cal. 151, 2 Am. Rep. 430 ; Hal lett v. Wylie, 3 Johns. (N. Y.) 44, 3 Am. Dec. 457; Cook v. Anderson, 85 Ala. 99, 4 South. 713 ; Nonotuck Silk Co. v. Shay, 37 Ill. App. 542.
But this severity of the ancient law has been somewhat abated in this country, and in this respect conforms to the more reason able provisions of the Code Napoldon, art.
1722, which declares that if the thing hired is destroyed by fortuitous events, during the continuance of the lease, the contract of hir ing is rescinded, but if it be only in part, the lessee may, according to circum stances, demand either a diminution of the rent or a rescission of the contract itself. The same provision is to be found substan tially in the Code of Louisiana, art. 2667, and in the act of the legislature of New York of 1860, c. 345, § 1. A somewhat similar provi sion is found in the laws of Minnesota ; Laws 1883, c. 100; Roach v. Peterson, 47 Minn. 291, 50 N. W. 80. In South Carolina and Pennsylvania it was decided that a ten ant who had been dispossessed by a public enemy ought not to pay rent for the time the possession was withheld from him ; and in Maryland it has been held that where a hur ricane rendered a house untenantable it was a good defence to an action for rent. But these cases are evidently exceptions to the general rule of law above stated ; Bayly v. Lawrence, 1 Bay (S. C.) 499 ; Fairman v. Fluck, 5 Watts (Pa.) 517. A tenant is not compel led to keep and pay rent for a house which, from defects in its construction, becomes untenantable and unfit for habitation ; Leon ard v. Armstrong, 73 Mich. 577, 41 N. W. 695. Where land has been swept away or gained upon by the sea, the lessee is no longer liable for rent ; Bac. Abr. 63 ; Rolle, Abr. 236.
The right of the lessor to terminate a lease for non-payment of rent will not give the lessee any right to avoid the lease or his liability for agreed rent ; Lehigh Zinc & Iron Co. v. Bamford, 150 U. S. 665, 14 Sup. Ct. 219, 37 L. Ed. 1215.
The quiet enjoyment of the premises, un molested by the landlord, is an implied con dition to the payment of rent. If, therefore, he ousts the tenant from any considerable portion of the premises, or erects a nuisance of any description upon or so near to them as to oblige the tenant to remove, or if the possession of the land should be recovered by a third person, by a title superior to that of the landlord, the dispossession in either case amounts to an eviction, and discharges the obligation to pay rent ; Gilhooley v. Wash ington, 4 N. Y. 217 ; 1 M. ISc W. 747; Hoeve ler v. Fleming, 91 Pa. 322 ; Royce v. Guggen heim, 106 Mass. 201, 8 Am. Rep. 322 ; Scott v. Simons, 54 N. H. 426 ; O'Neill v. Manget, 44 Mo. App. 279 ; Richmond v. Cake, 1 App. D. C. 447. By retaining possession of premis es in spite of such acts of his landlord as would otherwise amount to an eviction, a ten-' ant waives his right to withold the rent ; De Witt v. Pierson, 112 Mass. 8, 17 Am. Rep. 58. The entry of a landlord upon demised premises for the purpose of rebuilding does not operate as an eviction, where it was with the tenant's assent, and not to his entire ex clusion; Heller v. Ins. Co., 151 Pa. 101, 25 Atl. 83.
A tenant's liability for rent is not affected by condemnation of part of the leased prem ises; Corrigan v. Chicago, 144 Ill. 537, 33 N.