Q. My tenant insisted that I was required to install new air-conditioning in the office building he is leasing, but I told him I hadn’t agreed to provide air-conditioning, and he had to install it on his own dime. He kept arguing with me, however, so I finally agreed to cover a third of the cost, which he would deduct from his rent payments for the next few months.
I’m a little pressed for money now, though, so I told him that if he doesn’t deduct my portion of the costs immediately, but waits until next year to deduct it, I would pay half the cost instead of a third.
I later realized that this might be a ribbis problem. Is it?
A. When a person is in debt to another person — whether because he took a loan from him, or bought something that he hasn’t yet paid for, or owes rent — he is not allowed to pay more so that the debtor should extend the payment deadline. Such an addition is called agar neter (payment for delayed compensation), a form of ribbis.
This does not apply, however, to every case in which one person owes another money. We will now discuss scenarios.
1. If there is no actual debt:
In your case, for instance, in your opinion, you never owed your tenant money; you just didn’t want to get into further argument with him, so you agreed to pay for some of the cost of the air-conditioning. It is therefore not a ribbis issue to agree to pay a higher percentage later.
This halachah is based on the ruling of the poskim that if a person plans to give his friend a gift, and he promises that if he does not give that gift by a certain date, he will add more money for each week or month of delay, it is not ribbis. Since there was no debt, and the giver does not really have to give the other person any money, the added amount is also a gift and is not ribbis.
The poskim deduced from this halachah that if someone promised to give a certain amount as a dowry to his son-in-law, he may stipulate that if he doesn’t give it by a certain date, he will add on to the amount (Shulchan Aruch, Yoreh Dei’ah 177:15; Rema ibid. 176:6, with Taz 9).
But this applies only if the stipulation was made before the wedding (or the tena’im), because at that point, the father-in-law did not owe the money yet. After the wedding, however, since he now owes the dowry to his son-in-law (as stipulated in the tena’im), he may no longer “pay” for the delay in giving him the dowry (Shulchan Aruch ibid 176).
In your case, since you are not obligated to pay for a percentage of the air-conditioning, any amount you add because your tenant delays deducting from the rent is part of your original agreement to invest in the air-conditioning, and is considered a gift, not payment of a debt.
This is true only if you didn’t make a kinyan (act to formalize a transaction) on your agreement to pay for part of the air-conditioning. If you did make a kinyan, or the tenant already advanced payment for the air-conditioning, then your share becomes a debt, and you may not add to it in order to delay when it is deducted from the rent.
2. If someone owes a large sum of money
— $20,000, for instance — and can’t or is unwilling to pay the full amount, so the creditor agrees to make a two-tier agreement, in which he will accept a lower amount if he is paid immediately and a larger amount if paid later – up to the sum owed. That, too, is not ribbis.
To illustrate: If, theoretically, you were obligated to install new air-conditioning, and your tenant agreed to cover two-thirds of the cost because he wanted to settle the matter immediately, he would also be entitled to set a second percentage he is willing to cover (half, in your case) if he has to wait to deduct your share from the rent.
In summation, your arrangement is not ribbis either way. If you were truly obligated to pay for air-conditioning, then your arrangement is not ribbis because your tenant is simply willing to drop more of his demand if you give your share (in the form of a rent deduction) immediately, and less if you give your share later. And if you were not obligated to pay for the air-conditioning, then whatever you give is a gift, and your agreement to allow him to deduct a higher amount from the rent later just makes that gift larger.
If, however, it is clear that you owe a set amount — five thousand dollars, for instance – an additional payment for delaying remittance is considered ribbis (Bris Yehudah 2, fn. 29).
