Minnesota 2026 Rental Law Update: Key Changes

Chapter 81 of the 2026 Minnesota Laws bundles four distinct landlord-tenant provisions together: a payment platform fallback requirement, a restriction on naming minors in eviction filings, a utility billing estimation allowance, and a new expedited eviction ground tied to assault.

[Cite: Minnesota House Research Department, Act Summary, Chapter 81, 2026 Regular Session]

A landlord searching only for one of these topics individually may not realize the other three took effect on the exact same date, under the same chapter.

A landlord who offers tenants a digital or online payment platform must provide a free, functioning alternative payment method when that platform isn't working, and can't charge tenants a fee for using that alternative.

[Cite: Minnesota Statutes, section 504B.118, subdivision 2, as amended by 2026 Minnesota Laws, Chapter 81]

This provision also retitled the underlying statute itself, from "Receipt for Rent Paid in Cash" to the broader "Payment of Rent," reflecting that the law now addresses payment methods generally rather than just cash-payment receipts.

[Cite: Minnesota Statutes, section 504B.118, as amended by 2026 Minnesota Laws, Chapter 81]

A landlord can't pursue a nonpayment eviction where the underlying nonpayment was tied to the digital payment platform being unavailable.

[Cite: Minnesota House of Representatives, Session Daily, "House lawmakers OK digital payment protections for tenants, landlords"]

A committee testifier who supported this provision summarized the underlying problem simply: technology works until it doesn't. A landlord relying exclusively on a single digital payment system, without a documented, genuinely free fallback option, is the specific practice this provision targets.

[Cite: Minnesota House of Representatives, Session Daily, "House lawmakers OK digital payment protections for tenants, landlords"]

This bill was sponsored jointly by a Republican House member and a DFL Senate member, and legislators specifically noted that tenant and landlord advocacy groups worked together on the proposal rather than opposing each other.

[Cite: Minnesota House of Representatives, Session Daily, "House lawmakers OK digital payment protections for tenants, landlords"]

That context matters for a landlord evaluating how contested this requirement actually is. A provision built on this kind of two-sided input is less likely to face the kind of ongoing legal challenge or repeal effort that a more one-sided landlord-tenant law might see.

A landlord can't list a tenant's minor child as a defendant in an eviction action, unless that minor is the sole renter under the lease.

[Cite: Minnesota Statutes, section 504B.2136, as enacted by 2026 Minnesota Laws, Chapter 81]

The legislator who introduced this specific provision explained the problem it addresses directly: a young adult discovering years later that they have an eviction case on their record, filed against them as a minor dependent on a parent's lease, without ever having been a party to that lease themselves.

[Cite: Minnesota House of Representatives, Session Daily, "House lawmakers OK digital payment protections for tenants, landlords"]

A tenant harmed by an improper minor-naming violation can recover actual damages or $300, whichever is greater, from the landlord.

[Cite: Minnesota Statutes, section 504B.2136, as enacted by 2026 Minnesota Laws, Chapter 81]

That $300 figure functions as a floor, similar to how other statutory minimum-damages provisions work elsewhere in Minnesota landlord-tenant law: a tenant doesn't need to prove a larger actual-damages amount to recover at least that base figure.

The exclusion applies specifically to a minor child of the tenant, not to every non-leaseholding household member. An adult who lives in the unit but isn't on the lease isn't covered by this specific protection.

[Cite: Minnesota Statutes, section 504B.2136, as enacted by 2026 Minnesota Laws, Chapter 81]

A landlord preparing an eviction filing needs to specifically check the age of any household member being named, rather than assuming this exclusion covers every non-signatory occupant broadly.

A landlord may estimate a departing tenant's final utility bill, for both submetered utility service and apportioned utility service, based on the previous billing cycle, when the actual bill hasn't been received by the tenant's move-out date.

[Cite: Minnesota Statutes, sections 216B.023 and 504B.216, as amended by 2026 Minnesota Laws, Chapter 81]

This provision arrived as two parallel amendments rather than a single change, since Minnesota regulates submetered utility billing and apportioned utility billing under separate statutory sections.

[Cite: Minnesota Statutes, sections 216B.023 and 504B.216, as amended by 2026 Minnesota Laws, Chapter 81]

An estimated final utility bill issued under this provision can't include administrative billing charges or late payment charges.

[Cite: Minnesota House Research Department, Act Summary, Chapter 81, 2026 Regular Session]

That's a meaningful limitation on how a landlord can use this new estimation allowance. A landlord can estimate the underlying usage-based charge itself, but can't pad that estimate with the kind of administrative or late fees that wouldn't have applied to an actual, precisely metered final bill.

Before this provision, a landlord managing submetered or apportioned utilities had no clear statutory path to bill a departing tenant accurately when the tenant's move-out date fell in the middle of a utility billing cycle, before the actual usage data was available.

[Cite: Minnesota House Research Department, Act Summary, Chapter 81, 2026 Regular Session]

A landlord who previously either waited weeks after move-out to bill a former tenant, or simply absorbed that final billing period as a loss, now has a defined, previous-cycle-based estimation method available instead.

The expedited eviction ground applies when a tenant assaults a landlord or the landlord's employee or contractor, with assault defined by reference to Minnesota's existing criminal assault statute, and extends to conduct that seriously endangers the safety of other residents.

[Cite: Minnesota Statutes, section 504B.321, subdivision 2, as amended by 2026 Minnesota Laws, Chapter 81]

That cross-reference to the criminal code, rather than a newly invented definition specific to landlord-tenant law, means a landlord evaluating whether a specific incident qualifies should look at how Minnesota's existing assault statute defines the conduct, not just a general sense that something threatening occurred.

The same subdivision that added the assault-based expedited eviction ground also increased an existing civil penalty from $500 to $750.

[Cite: Minnesota Statutes, section 504B.321, subdivision 2, as amended by 2026 Minnesota Laws, Chapter 81]

That penalty increase is a separate, unrelated change riding along in the same amended subsection, worth flagging specifically since a landlord reviewing only the assault-eviction provision might miss that the dollar figure attached to a different violation in that same subdivision also moved.

A landlord relying on a single digital rent payment vendor should have an actual, ready-to-use free alternative payment method identified and communicated to tenants in advance, rather than improvising one only after a platform outage occurs.

[Cite: Minnesota Statutes, section 504B.118, subdivision 2, as amended by 2026 Minnesota Laws, Chapter 81]

A landlord who scrambles to identify a fallback method only during an actual outage, after a tenant has already missed a payment because of that outage, is reacting to a compliance problem this provision was specifically designed to prevent.

The practical starting point is confirming a documented, genuinely free fallback payment method exists and is communicated to tenants before any platform outage occurs, and auditing eviction filing templates and staff training to exclude minor household members from the defendant list unless that minor is the sole leaseholder.

For any property with submetered or apportioned utility billing, building the previous-cycle estimation method into the standard move-out billing process, without including administrative or late charges in that estimate, closes the remaining compliance gap this chapter creates.