Subleasing? Protect Your Rights by Making It Official.

What happens when the main lease goes month to month depends on the sublease. If the agreement is on the up and up with management, your daughter could request to be given priority to take over the lease of the apartment if her roommates move out, whereupon she could find new roommates.

Based on the agreement, her status as both a sublessor and a month-to-month tenant could allow her to exit the agreement with a month's notice if she is unhappy with the situation.

As for dividing the daily duties, well, this may prove challenging. The couple probably will make decisions as a pair and thus wield more influence in their already-established apartment -- or perhaps they will fight and ask your daughter to take sides.

As long as her roommates are not tired of dealing with documents, the trio could collectively draw up an informal roommate agreement that explains chores, bill-paying, noise and guest policies. This may make it easier to talk about daily living.

Have your daughter talk with her prospective roommates about the arrangement. Make sure she tells them that she wants a voice and that she doesn't want to feel awkward when she is in the kitchen or living room. She will want to make it clear that she expects to do her part but also does not want to feel like a third wheel.

Q: My husband and I have lived in a stately but old apartment building for 14 years. Noise had not been an issue until the past three years.

The mother and son who lived above us for most of that recent time were noisy. She would prowl around all night and even move furniture at 2 a.m. She had no carpeting.

We complained to our landlord, and he promised that the next tenant would be required in his lease to have carpet. Two weeks after a single father and two children moved in, the father denied ever being told about the carpet issue, pleaded allergies and refused to spend money for carpet! Somewhere along the way, I remember something about rental apartments above others being required to carpet a specific percentage of their floor space. Are there any rules regarding this? Where can I find them? -- Washington

A: There are no universal rental laws that require tenants to carpet their apartment floors. In a particular building, it depends on the landlord's rules or, in the case of private owners or condos, the community's rules.

If your building does not come with carpet and your landlord does not make it a condition in the lease or community rules, then neither you nor your neighbors are required to install carpet.

Rather than get angry at your new neighbors, you should take the issue up with your landlord again. It is possible that your landlord did not do as he said he would by making carpet a lease term for the new tenants.

Ask the landlord to talk to your new neighbors about noise and bring up the subject of carpet. You could ask your landlord to stay true to his word and offer to buy carpet for that apartment -- or at the very least, ask him to intervene early so that tenants know about noise rules.

Remind your landlord that you have been tenants for more than a dozen years and hope that he can work to ensure a better living environment for you. Because you have evidence that noise levels have changed depending on who lives above you, it seems that laying down some rules -- if not carpet -- would help persuade new tenants to be quieter neighbors.

Do you have questions, comments or ideas about apartment life? Contact Sara Gebhardt via e-mail at aptlife@gmail.comor by mail, c/o Real Estate Editor, The Washington Post, 1150 15th St. NW, Washington, D.C. 20071.