Does my personal guarantee on the lease disappear once the lease is assigned?

No, not on its own. A personal guarantee is a separate contract between you and the landlord, distinct from the lease itself. Assigning the lease to a buyer transfers the tenant's leasehold interest, but it does not automatically cancel a guarantee you personally signed — the landlord can generally continue to rely on it unless the guarantee agreement says otherwise or the landlord agrees in writing to release you.

This is one of the most common surprises for sellers: they assume that once the business and lease change hands, their personal exposure ends with it. In reality, many guarantees are drafted broadly enough to keep covering the tenant's obligations under the lease regardless of who the tenant becomes, sometimes even through renewals.

If getting out of a personal guarantee matters to you — and it usually should — it needs to be negotiated as a specific, express condition of the landlord's consent to the assignment, ideally documented in the same agreement that approves the buyer. Don't assume silence means release. A Treadstone business lawyer can review your guarantee's wording and press for a clean release before closing.