Rent-to-Own Laws in South Carolina: Your Rights

South Carolina regulates rent-to-own through the consumer rental-purchase part of its Consumer Protection Code (S.C. Code §§37-2-701 to 37-2-714). Its real strength is detail: it puts a dollar cap on nearly every charge a store can add, and it spells out your rights to reinstate, return, or buy early.

Can I be arrested for not paying?

No. Falling behind on a rental-purchase agreement is a civil matter, not a crime. The law sits inside the Consumer Protection Code and works through civil rules (caps on charges, disclosure duties, and your reinstatement and return rights), not criminal penalties against a customer who misses payments.

Can I be charged with theft for keeping the item?

Here South Carolina protects you. The state’s failure-to-return larceny statute, which otherwise makes it a crime to wilfully and fraudulently fail to return rented property within 72 hours after the rental agreement has expired, expressly does not apply to lease-purchase agreements (S.C. Code §16-13-420). A rent-to-own deal is a lease-purchase agreement, so that crime cannot be used against you.

That makes South Carolina one of the safer states on this question. Even so, returning the item is the clean way to end the matter if you decide to walk away.

What can the store actually charge?

South Carolina is unusually specific about fees, which makes “padded” charges easy to spot. The law caps:

• a delinquency charge at no more than $4 (on monthly or less-frequent agreements, after 5 business days) or $2 (on more frequent ones, after 3 business days), and it can be collected only once per scheduled payment (§37-2-705);
• an initial nonrefundable fee at no more than $5 (§37-2-706);
• a delivery charge at no more than $15 (or $45 if the agreement covers more than five items), and only if the store actually delivers to your home (§37-2-706);
• a pickup charge at no more than $7, limited in how often it can be assessed (§37-2-706).

Beyond these specific charges, an agreement may not charge you for a default, and any provision that tries to is unenforceable (§37-2-707).

Can the store come into my home?

South Carolina’s rental-purchase part doesn’t spell out its own breach-of-the-peace rule; it concentrates on charges, disclosures, and your reinstatement and return rights. As a general matter, though, a store still can’t break in or force a confrontation to take the item, and one that can’t repossess peacefully has to use the courts. The law also bars an agreement from making you confess judgment (§37-2-712) or sign away your claims and defenses (§37-2-709).

Reinstatement after a missed payment

If you fall behind, you have the right to reinstate the original agreement without losing any rights or options you’d earned, as long as the agreement is not more than 60 days in default, and (where the store has asked for the item back) you surrendered it during the time payments were missed (S.C. Code §37-2-714). To reinstate, you pay the outstanding accrued payments and delinquency charges, plus a delivery charge if the item has to be brought back. The store then has to give you the same item or a comparable substitute.

Returning the item or buying it early

At any time after your first payment, you have three choices: return the item, keep making payments, or buy it early (S.C. Code §37-2-713). The early-buyout price is 55% of the difference between the total of scheduled payments and what you’ve already paid, so the further along you are, the cheaper it is to own it outright. Returning the item stops future payments. The ownership calculator can help you compare buying early against finishing the payments.