Sufferance

Omission to object; negative permission; passive consent. Sufferance should be distinguished from assent, consent, leave, and permission, which may import affirmative action, expressed volition, while sufferance is negative. Thus a tenant by sufferance is one who came lawfully into possession of lands, but whose right has expired, and who is now occupying merely by the permission implied from the owner's not having given notice to quit. A tenant at sufferance is one who holds over his term at first lawfully granted; one who continues after his estate is ended, and wrongfully holdeth against another, &c.; one who comes into possession of land by lease for a year, and, after the year i» expired, continues to hold the premises without any fresh leave from the owner of the estate; or, if a man maketh a lease at will, and dies, and the tenant continues in possession. Jacob. Tenancy by sufferance is the least and lowest estate in realty which can subsist; it is in strictness not an estate, but' a mere possession only. It arises when a person, after his right to the occupation, under a lawful title, is at an end, continues (having no title at all) in possession of the land, without the agreement or disagreement of the person in whom the right of possession resides. Thus, if A is a tenant for years, and his term expires, or is tenant at will, and his lessor dies, and he continues the possession, without the disagreement of the person who is entitled to the same, in the one and the other of these cases, he is said to have the possession by sufferance; that is, merely by permission or indulgence, without any right, — the law esteeming it just and reasonable, and for the interest of the tenant, and also of the person entitled to the possession, to deem the occupation to be continued by the permission of the person who has the right, till it is proved that the tenant withholds the possession wrongfully, which the law will not presume. As the party came to the possession by right, the law will esteem that right to continue either in point of estate or by the permission of the owner of the land, till it is proved that the possession is held in opposition to the will of that person.

Wharton.