Deadline calculator

Fill in whichever dates you have. Everything downstream is calculated as you type, rolled forward off weekends and court holidays, with the rule behind each number shown next to it.

Read this before you trust the output

This is arithmetic, not advice. It applies general Texas justice-court timelines and cannot know your lease, your judge, or whether your clerk counts a day differently. Confirm every date that matters with the court clerk. Nothing calculated here creates or extends a legal right, and a wrong date can cost you the case.

Your dates

Date the notice to vacate was delivered The day you actually mailed or delivered it — not the day you wrote it.

Notice period your lease requires Texas defaults to 3 days, but a written lease may set a shorter period. Check yours.

Date the petition was filed The date the clerk accepted it, if that differs from the date you submitted it.

Date the tenant was served From the officer's return of service — not the date you filed.

Trial date From the court's notice of hearing. Leave blank until you have it.

Date judgment was signed This one drives the appeal window and every writ deadline.

Your deadlines

Enter at least one date above to see your deadlines.

How the counting works

Texas eviction deadlines are counted in calendar days — Saturdays, Sundays and holidays are included in the count. But if the last day of a period lands on a Saturday, Sunday or legal holiday, the deadline extends to the next day that is not. This calculator applies that rule and flags any date it moved.

Two deadlines are counted differently, in business days: the officer's deadline to attempt service, and the officer's deadline to serve an issued writ. Those are handled separately above.

Two consequences worth internalising:

Rolling forward helps the other side, not you. A weekend at the end of an appeal window gives the tenant extra days, and pushes your earliest writ date back with it.
Filing early does not start the clock early. If you file before the notice period expires, the case is vulnerable regardless of how the days fall.

Deadlines changed on 1 January 2026

Texas S.B. 38 rewrote much of eviction procedure and moved it out of the Rules of Civil Procedure into Property Code chapter 24. Two changes bite immediately: the minimum gap between service and trial dropped from six days to four, and the old alias-citation procedure was replaced by a five-business-day service-effort rule. A great deal of guidance still online describes the repealed version.

What this calculator does not know

Whether your lease shortens or lengthens the notice period, and whether a pay-or-vacate notice was required rather than a plain notice to vacate.
Whether the tenant filed an answer, a jury demand, or a response to a summary disposition motion — any of which changes the shape of the case.
Whether a possession bond was filed, which changes when a writ may issue.
Whether service actually happened, which is the fact most likely to derail your trial date.
Local court practice. Precincts genuinely differ on scheduling.

Legal constants and citations for every number above live in a single RULES block at the top of calculator.js, verified against the enrolled text of S.B. 38 (89th Legislature) on 29 August 2026. If a rule changes, that is the only place to edit — corrections welcome.