Expire / Expiry

[skylee]

My current tenancy is valid up to and including 31 March 2012. I will have to take out a new lease that takes effect on 1 April. I just want to check if I should say that the old lease will expire on 31 March or 1 April 2012. Thanks in advance for any advice.

[imron]

I would say it expires on the 31st of March. On April 1st it has expired.

But I am not a lawyer. That is just my layman's understanding.

[abcdefg]

Agree with @Imron. But I'm not a lawyer either.

[skylee]

A friend has asked her niece, who is a lawyer-cum-barrister in NZ. The advice is that the lease expires on 1 April.

[gato]

Probably depends on the purpose of the question, right?

[skylee]

Oh it's nothing to do with the law. I just want to know the proper way to say it generally. I find that most of the times when I talk about when something ends (eg projects), it seems a bit confusing to use words like expire / expiry and I usually have to provide more information like the exact end date for clarification. And I thought maybe it is just me who finds this confuisng and maybe everyone else understands the words in perfectly the same way.

[gato]

Usually people refer to the last date of an effective period when they refer to an "expiration date". But it sounds like your friend's niece is referring to the first date when the contract is no longer effective. Most people would understand the expiration date to mean the last date of the effective period. To avoid this ambiguity, you could also say that something is "effective until", though "until" can cause some confusion, too, as some might understand it to not include the date, though the most common understanding is that "until X" would actually include "X".

[skylee]

Most people would understand the expiration date to mean the last date of the effective period.

OK.

[jbradfor]

I can't speak for the law, but personally, if I had a coupon that said it expired on March 31, I would expect that I could use it on March 31.

[skylee]

so if the mark of a carton of milk says "expiry 09092012", you would interpret it as being good up to and including 9 Sep? (Personally I will think it is safe up to the end of Jan 2013, hahahaha).

[jbradfor]

I would.

Consider the case of a expiry date with only the month / year. If a package of food said it expired on March 2012, would you think it's good only until February 29? I wouldn't, because to me the expiry date is inclusive, whether it's down to a day or to a month.