Tools California Civil Deadlines
California Court Deadline Calculator
Count forward from a triggering event or backward from a hearing or trial date, on either court days or calendar days, with an optional extension for the method of service. Weekends and California court holidays for 2026, 2027, and 2028 are built in.
Not Legal Advice. This tool is informational only and can contain errors. Deadlines turn on facts, local rules, and exceptions it does not capture. Confirm every date against the governing statutes, the California Rules of Court, and your court’s local rules before relying on it.
Set Up the Calculation
Choose a preset to fill in the fields below, or build your own.
Forward from a triggering event such as filing or service. A deadline that lands on a weekend or holiday moves to the next court day.
Click a day or type the date. This day itself is not counted (Code Civ. Proc., § 12).
Court days exclude weekends and court holidays. Calendar days count every day, but a deadline that lands on a weekend or holiday still rolls to a court day.
Extensions follow Code Civ. Proc., § 1013 and § 1010.6. When a preset runs from service, electronic service is selected by default; change it if the paper was served another way.
Your Deadline
Enter a date to calculate a deadline.
How This Was Calculated
How This Calculator Works
Counting Days
The reference date is excluded from the count, and the last day is included (Code Civ. Proc., § 12). When counting backward from a hearing, the day of the hearing is excluded and the count runs backward from there (Code Civ. Proc., § 12c).
Court Days and Calendar Days
Court days exclude every Saturday and Sunday and every court holiday. Calendar days include every day, but if the resulting deadline falls on a weekend or holiday it is moved: to the next court day when counting forward (Code Civ. Proc., § 12a), and to the preceding court day when counting backward.
Method of Service
When a deadline runs from the “service” of a document, the time can be extended by the manner of service: 5 calendar days for mail within California, 10 for mail elsewhere in the United States, 20 for mail outside the country, and 2 court days for fax, overnight delivery, or electronic service (Code Civ. Proc., § 1013; § 1010.6). Because electronic service is now the norm, presets whose deadline runs from service (responses to a complaint, discovery responses, motions to compel, and moving papers) default to electronic service; you can change that selection whenever the paper was served another way. Presets that do not have a service dimension at all (filing a complaint, trial-based cutoffs) hide the control.
Some papers are not extended by the manner of service and instead simply have to be served and filed by the deadline: oppositions and replies under Code Civ. Proc., § 1005(b), summary-judgment oppositions and replies under § 437c, and similar filings. For those, the tool shows a serve-by caution rather than a service extension: the paper has to reach the other parties by the deadline, so a paper mailed on the due date is late. One nuance to confirm independently: for the moving papers on a noticed motion, § 1005(b) states the fax, overnight, and electronic extensions in calendar days rather than court days, so this tool’s 2-court-day treatment is a conservative (slightly earlier) substitute.
Holiday Coverage: 2026–2028
Weekends and the observed California court holidays for 2026, 2027, and 2028 are built in, including holidays shifted off a weekend (for example, Independence Day observed on Friday, July 3, 2026). California had not formally adopted a 2027 or 2028 statewide schedule when this tool was built; those two years follow the schedules provided and are very likely to match. For any date reaching another year, the calculator warns you and accounts for weekends only, so confirm that year’s holidays against your court’s published schedule.
Scope
This calculator covers California state trial-court civil deadlines. It does not address federal deadlines, appellate deadlines, limited civil timelines, arbitration, local rules, or the many statutory exceptions. Everything runs in your browser; nothing you enter is uploaded, logged, or shared.