Rent Acceleration

Location: Calabasas, CA

My wife and I rented an apartment in a big complex owned by a big corporation who own many such locations. My father in law passed away unexpectedly and my elderly mother in law, needing care, asked us to move in with her.

My wife went to the office and let them know we wanted to exercise our option to pay an early termination fee of two months rent, around 8k, and break our lease. They sent us a confirmation email.

We stayed in touch with them during the move out process. My wife even listed the apartment on facebook and other places to help them fill it.

At no point during this process, nor in their confirmation email, did they reach out with instructions on how/when to pay this early termination fee. Being enrolled in autopay, I assumed that it would be taken care of through that.

We move out then get an email letting us know that since we didn’t pay the early termination fee before our move out date, that we owe the remainder of the rent of the lease, about 55k.

After much back and forth emailing between us and the customer service dept of the corporation that owns the building, they are not budging. They insist that since we didn’t pay the fee before our move out date that we owe the full 55k.

It IS in the lease that the fee needed to be paid prior to moving out but we felt like we were not adequately informed of this by management who we were VERY engaged with during the final weeks before moving out.

We even received a move out instructions document with nothing in there about how/when to pay this fee.

We feel misled. But it seems that technically they got us dead to rights.

Now, if they fill the apt vacancy we will only owe rent up to the point that it was filled. But I worry that they, knowing they can get the money from us, will put filling that vacancy on the bottom of their priority list.

TLDR; it wasn’t clearly communicated to my wife and I how/when to pay our lease’s early termination fee and now they’re insisting we pay the full remainder of our lease’s value which we cannot afford. It feels unfair. It feels predatory. It feels sneaky. It feels like they intentionally deceived us.

Do I have any recourse with or without lawyering up?