Free Lease

[debjs]

Can anyone explain to me exactly what a free lease is? And why would someone want to free lease a horse to someone? Is this a common practice?

 

[ThreeCFarm]

In my experience, a free lease is where you get to lease the horse without paying any money to the owner, but you do take over any bills associated with the horse. Maybe the owner doesn't need the horse at the current time, or they can't take care of it at that time, etc and they don't want to sell it. They intend to get the horse back at some point in the future.

 

[backwoodsnanny]

Many reasons someone would want to free lease one of their horses. A divorce comes to mind and other financial circumstances or perhaps you have multiple stallions and dont really want to sell a certain stallion but do want to be able to use the stallion again at some point so you would free lease the stallion to someone else for a year where they would use the stallion and pay for all care for that year. OR you recently lost your job and have many horses you might free lease a horse to someone until you have a job again. Or perhaps you know someone who would like to show and you already have more horses than you can comfortably show you might free lease one to that show home. I hope that explains some of the circumstances where a free lease is desirable.

 

[Bozley]

We are going to free lease our two first minis, Bozley & Fancy which are full brother and sister this weekend to a great home. The reason we decided to free lease and not sell is because we just adore these minis and we want to make sure we have control of where they end up. We do not want them separated and we do not want Fancy to be bred. I am really happy with the place they are going to but I want to make sure they don't get passed on to a home that isn't great for them. This way I can continue to do visits and make sure they are safe and well cared for. If the owner decides they know longer want them, I will not hesitate to take them back.

 

[Reijel's Mom]

I am looking to free lease out my riding gelding this year - because I am expecting and he won't get used at all sitting here. He may as well go to someone who can get some use out of him, rather than have him just sit, and I won't have the feeding expense, hoof trim expense, etc in the meantime.

I'm not advertising him, though, would only want him to go to someone I trust or someone that I trust, trusts (and then I'll still do some serious screening and have a contract).

I free leased a mini gelding to a friend for about a year. I had "extra" horses, she wanted a little guy around for her niece, it was a win/win. I knew he was safe and being loved on with friends, getting more attention than he would have here, it worked out really well.

 

[Keri]

I actually free leased a gelding. Got to mess around with him for a year to see if we went well together. Ended up buying him. But he was just sitting around at the previous owners place and needed a job. So I took him to see if he could be trained in what I wanted before investing money into buying him.

The people leasing the horse are responsible for paying a set price on the horse if the horse should happen to die.

 

[h2t99]

I am all for free lease, we have leased out one of our QH geldings before and I have also leased a Qh and a mini before!! One word of caution though, make sure you check up on your horse if you lease one out!! We learned a hard lesson with our QH, we leased him for the summer to a teen girl that we knew and then again the next summer, first year was great and we checked on him several times, second year, we did not check on him for 2 months, when we stopped in one night we about died!! He was a skelton!!

The teen got a boyfriend and did not feed the horses like she told her mom she was doing!! The horses were at another farm so the mom trusted her daughter!!

Needless to say our horse came home the next morning and mom met me and was shocked also!! She was horrifed at what her daughter had done. So just a caution, no matter how well you know someone still check!!

I still think free lease is a great option!!

 

[Seashells]

Once, I let a very trusted family take my quarter horse mare for as long as they wanted.

In my mind, I let them borrow her, but now I'm reading about free leasing....I guess it was technically "free lease". I don't think we even contracted anything. Just a wonderful family, and their girls learned to ride, and that was rewarding for everyone.

My mare returned around 6 months later

 

[Marty]

I'd make sure that full insurance coverage is being carried