Statute of Limitations Calculator

In the vast majority of cases, the court will dismiss the lawsuit entirely regardless of how strong the evidence is or how clearly the other party was at fault, because the right to sue itself expires, not just the convenience of filing. A small number of narrow exceptions like fraudulent concealment by the defendant can sometimes revive an expired claim, but they are the rare exception rather than something to count on.

Minor tolling exists to protect children who can't file a lawsuit on their own behalf, so the law fixes the extension at whatever gap existed between their age when injured and turning 18, then adds the standard filing period on top of that fixed gap. Because that extension is locked in at the moment of the incident, it still applies in full even if you're checking the deadline years after the child has already become an adult.

No — Effective Deadline Months is calculated and shown as a separate, informational estimate of what the discovery rule could mean for your case, but it does not get folded into the Months Remaining or Deadline Expired figures this calculator highlights as the headline result. Anyone whose injury was discovered well after the incident, which is common in medical malpractice, should treat the standard countdown shown here as a floor, not the final word, and verify the real deadline with an attorney.

Not within this calculator's math — Claim Type is a label for context, but the actual countdown is driven entirely by whatever State Statute of Limitations figure you enter, since different states genuinely do set different limitations periods for personal injury versus medical malpractice versus product liability claims. You need to enter the correct period for your specific state and claim type rather than relying on the calculator to look it up for you.

Working in whole months avoids the added complexity of calendar and leap-year arithmetic while still giving a close, practical estimate of remaining time, and remaining months are converted to an approximate day count using an average 30.44-day month for a rough sense of urgency. For a deadline within weeks of expiring, confirming the exact calendar date with an attorney is essential rather than relying on this averaged conversion.