Statute of Limitations Calculator

Introduction to limitation-period arithmetic and what this engine computes

A statute of limitations fixes the outer date on which a civil claim can still be commenced. The arithmetic that turns "two years from the collision" into a specific calendar day is small but unforgiving: get it wrong by a single day and a meritorious claim is time barred. This page implements that arithmetic explicitly, shows every intermediate step, and cites the rule behind each step so the output can be checked rather than trusted.

Three separate questions sit behind any filing deadline. First, when did the claim accrue? That is a question of substantive law and this calculator never answers it — you supply the accrual date. Second, how long is the period? That comes from a specific statute, and the presets below each carry a section citation. Third, how is the period counted? That is the mechanical question this engine actually solves, and it is where practitioners most often slip.

The engine reports two dates rather than one. The statutory last day is the day the limitation period expires on its own terms. The adjusted filing day is that date moved forward to the next day the clerk's office is open, if the statutory last day is a Saturday, Sunday or legal holiday. Keeping them apart matters, because a statute of repose or a contractual limitation clause may be measured against the unadjusted date.

Accrual, discovery, tolling and repose: the four clocks behind a deadline

• Accrual date. The day the cause of action comes into existence and the clock starts. For a collision that is normally the day of the crash; for breach of a written contract it is normally the day of breach; for a continuing wrong it may be a series of dates. Texas states the trigger expressly: suit must be brought "not later than two years after the day the cause of action accrues" (Tex. Civ. Prac. & Rem. Code § 16.003(a)).
• Discovery basis. Some claims accrue only when the injury is discovered or reasonably should have been discovered. California writes the rule into the fraud statute itself: the action "is not deemed to have accrued until the discovery, by the aggrieved party, of the facts constituting the fraud or mistake" (Cal. Code Civ. Proc. § 338(d)). Selecting the discovery basis in the form only changes which date the engine counts from; it does not decide that a discovery rule is available to you.
• Tolling. Minority, mental incapacity, the defendant's absence from the state, a bankruptcy stay, servicemember protections and equitable tolling can all suspend the running of the period. Because a toll pauses the clock, tolled days push the deadline later, never earlier. The engine adds them as one block at the end of the period, which is a simplification described in the limitations section.
• Statute of repose. A repose period runs from a fixed structural event and can extinguish a claim before it is even discovered. Florida caps construction-defect claims at seven years from the certificate of occupancy regardless of discovery (Fla. Stat. § 95.11(3)(b)), and federal securities fraud is capped at five years from the violation (28 U.S.C. § 1658(b)(2)). Repose is a separate ceiling and this calculator does not check it for you.

The counting formula: Rule 6(a) applied to a period stated in years

Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 6(a) governs "any time period specified in these rules, in any local rule or court order, or in any statute that does not specify a method of computing time," and Rule 6(a)(1) applies to periods "stated in days or a longer unit of time" — years included. It supplies three of the four steps the engine performs.

Write the accrual date as , the period as units, and the tolled days as . The statutory last day and the adjusted filing day are:

Here when the period is stated in years and when it is stated in months; a period stated in days skips addMonths entirely. The four steps behind those two lines are:

1. Exclude the trigger day. Rule 6(a)(1)(A) directs you to "exclude the day of the event that triggers the period." Anniversary counting does this automatically: the first full day of a two-year period beginning 15 March 2024 is 16 March 2024, and the period ends on 15 March 2026.
2. Count calendar units, not 365-day blocks. addMonths advances the month index and keeps the day of the month, clamping down when the target month is short. New York states the rule directly: a period of months "shall include the day of the month in the last month so counted having the same numerical order in days of the month as the day from which the computation is made, unless there be not so many days in the last month so counted, in which case the period computed shall expire with the last day of the month so counted" (N.Y. Gen. Constr. Law § 30). Section 58 of the same law ties years to months and neutralises the leap day, providing that "the added day of a leap year and the day immediately preceding shall for the purpose of such computation be counted as one day." California Government Code § 6803 uses the identical leap-day device.
3. Add tolled days. A toll suspends the running of the period, so the days come off the elapsed time and go onto the end of the window. Adding days is therefore the correct sign; subtracting them would move the deadline earlier and understate the window.
4. Roll off closed days. Rule 6(a)(1)(C) provides that if the last day is "a Saturday, Sunday, or legal holiday, the period continues to run until the end of the next day that is not a Saturday, Sunday, or legal holiday," and Rule 6(a)(5) confirms that the "next day" is found "by continuing to count forward when the period is measured after an event." State practice is parallel: N.Y. Gen. Constr. Law § 25-a and Cal. Code Civ. Proc. § 12 both push a deadline off a closed day.

Jurisdiction presets and the statute each one comes from

Every preset in the form is reproduced below with its citation. These are the general periods for broad claim categories; they are starting points for the arithmetic, not a substitute for reading the statute that governs your matter.

Two entries deserve a warning. Florida's negligence period was shortened from four years to two by chapter 2023-86, so a claim that accrued before 24 March 2023 may still carry the older four-year period; the calculator does not apply that transition rule for you. New York's fraud provision is not a flat six years — CPLR § 213(8) gives the claimant the greater of six years from accrual or two years from actual or constructive discovery, and the preset only models the six-year leg.

How to use the form on a live matter, field by field

• Jurisdiction and claim type. Choosing both fills the period and unit from the preset table and displays the section citation underneath. Leave either blank when you are working from a statute the presets do not cover, and type the period in yourself.
• Accrual basis. Select whether the date you are entering is the date of the incident or the date of discovery. The label on the date field changes to match. This selector is descriptive only — it records which theory you are counting from and never asserts that the theory is available.
• Accrual date. The single most consequential input. For a collision it is the crash date; for breach of a written contract, the date of breach; for a demand note, the due date. If two accrual theories are arguable, run the calculation twice and calendar the earlier answer.
• Limitation period and unit. Enter a whole number and pick years, months or days. Statutes are written in whole units, so 18 months is entered as 18 months, not 1.5 years; the six-month window after a Federal Tort Claims Act denial under 28 U.S.C. § 2401(b) is entered as 6 months. Fractional entries are rejected with a message rather than silently rounded.
• Tolling days. Whole days only, and they extend the deadline. Enter zero unless you have a concrete legal basis and a computed number of days. If tolling is contested, calendar the untolled date and treat the tolled date as upside.
• Business-day rollover. Leave enabled when you are filing in a court that follows Rule 6(a) or an equivalent state provision. Disable it if you need the raw statutory expiry — for example when comparing against a statute of repose or a contractual limitation clause that has no rollover of its own.

Worked example: a leap-day accrual with a weekend expiry

A Texas collision occurs on 29 February 2024. Personal injury in Texas carries a two-year period under Tex. Civ. Prac. & Rem. Code § 16.003(a). There is no tolling. Run the four steps by hand:

1. Accrual. . Rule 6(a)(1)(A) excludes 29 February itself, so counting begins 1 March 2024.
2. Calendar units. Two years is 24 months. Advancing the month index by 24 from February 2024 lands on February 2026, and the day of the month is 29 — which does not exist in 2026. The month-end rule clamps it to the last day of the month: .
3. Tolling. Zero days, so the statutory last day stays 28 February 2026.
4. Rollover. 28 February 2026 is a Saturday. Rule 6(a)(1)(C) carries the period to the next day that is not a Saturday, Sunday or legal holiday. Sunday 1 March is skipped, so the adjusted filing day is Monday 2 March 2026.

The engine reports both figures: a statutory last day of 2026-02-28 and an adjusted filing day of 2026-03-02. Day-count shortcuts happen to agree on this input, but they are not stable. Move the accrual to 15 June 2023 and keep the two-year period: the anniversary is 15 June 2025, while adding 730 days returns 14 June 2025, a day early, because 29 February 2024 sits inside the window and the shortcut never counts it. Move the accrual to 1 January 2021 with a three-year period: the anniversary is 1 January 2024, while adding days returns 2 January 2024, a day late — the more dangerous direction, because it invites a filing one day after the bar has fallen. Only calendar counting is stable in both directions.

Now change one fact. Suppose 45 days were tolled while the defendant was outside the state. The statutory last day becomes 28 February 2026 plus 45 days, or 14 April 2026, a Tuesday, so no rollover applies and the adjusted filing day is the same date. Note the direction: tolling moved the deadline six weeks later. A tool that subtracted tolling would have returned 14 January 2026 and quietly cost the claimant three months of window.

Reading the result: statutory last day, adjusted filing day, and the reminder ladder

The result panel separates the computation into the steps a docketing clerk would check.

A deadline is not a plan. The engine therefore also emits a reminder ladder at 180, 90, 30 and 7 days before the adjusted filing day, skipping any rung that has already passed. Firms commonly docket the earliest rung as the working deadline and treat the statutory date as a hard backstop, because service, pre-suit notice and expert affidavits all consume calendar time that the limitation period does not care about.

Treat a "days remaining" figure of zero or less as a stop signal, not a result. If the engine reports that the window has closed, the analysis shifts to whether any tolling, relation-back or equitable doctrine revives it — a question well outside arithmetic.

Limitations of this model and the assumptions baked into it

The engine is deliberately narrow. These are its assumptions, stated so you can decide whether they hold for your matter:

• Calendar counting is assumed. Periods in years are counted as whole calendar months and clamped at month end. Some jurisdictions define a year as a fixed 365 days (Cal. Gov. Code § 6803; N.Y. Gen. Constr. Law § 58), and although both neutralise the leap day so that the anniversary result follows, a forum that counted 365 days literally could land a day apart on a long period.
• Federal holidays only. The rollover uses the eleven legal public holidays in 5 U.S.C. § 6103(a) with Saturday and Sunday in-lieu observance. Rule 6(a)(6)(C) also treats "any other day declared a holiday by the state where the district court is located" as a legal holiday for forward-counted periods, and state courts keep their own calendars. A state holiday the engine does not know about can move the real deadline later.
• Tolling is a single block. Tolled days are added once at the end of the period. Actual tolling can begin and end repeatedly, can run from a date other than accrual, and in minority cases typically runs until a fixed age rather than for a countable number of days.
• The discovery rule is not modelled. Choosing the discovery basis changes the start date and nothing else. Whether the doctrine is available, and whether inquiry notice arose earlier than actual knowledge, are contested questions of fact and law.
• No statute of repose, no notice deadlines. Repose periods, contractual limitation clauses, government notice-of-claim requirements and administrative exhaustion deadlines are frequently shorter than the limitation period and are not checked.
• Presets are general rules only. They do not cover medical malpractice, defamation, wrongful death, products liability, UCC sales claims, or claims against public entities, and they do not apply transition rules when a legislature changes a period.
• Time of day is ignored. The engine works in whole calendar days. Rule 6(a)(1)(C) runs the period "until the end of" the last day, but an individual clerk's office or e-filing portal may impose an earlier cut-off.

Disclaimer: This calculator is for educational and general informational purposes only and is not legal advice. Using it creates no attorney-client relationship. Limitation periods and the doctrines of accrual, discovery, tolling and repose vary by jurisdiction and change over time. Before relying on any date for an actual filing, read the governing statute, check the local rules of the court, and consult a lawyer licensed in the relevant jurisdiction.

Sources and authorities

Counting rules: Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 6(a)(1), 6(a)(5) and 6(a)(6), Legal Information Institute, Cornell Law School. Federal holidays: 5 U.S.C. § 6103(a), with Saturday in-lieu observance under § 6103(b) and Sunday in-lieu observance under Executive Order 11582 § 3(a), as summarised by the U.S. Office of Personnel Management. Calendar-unit and leap-day rules: N.Y. Gen. Constr. Law §§ 30, 58 and 25-a; Cal. Gov. Code § 6803; Cal. Code Civ. Proc. § 12. Federal limitation periods: 28 U.S.C. § 1658(a)-(b) and 28 U.S.C. § 2401(a)-(b), United States Code via Cornell LII. State limitation periods, each verified against the enacting jurisdiction's official code: Cal. Code Civ. Proc. §§ 335.1, 337, 338, 339 (California Legislative Information); N.Y. CPLR §§ 213, 214 (New York State Senate, Laws of New York); Fla. Stat. § 95.11 (The Florida Senate); 735 ILCS 5/13-202, 5/13-205, 5/13-206 (Illinois General Assembly); Tex. Civ. Prac. & Rem. Code §§ 16.003, 16.004, 16.051 (Texas Constitution and Statutes). Statutes are current as reviewed in August 2026; legislatures amend limitation periods regularly, so re-check the section text before relying on a preset.

Questions practitioners ask about limitation-period arithmetic