Los Angeles Eviction Lawyer Blog

A three day notice to pay rent or quit may be served at any time within 1 year after the rent becomes due.  Thus, a landlord is apparently limited to demanding rent that becomes due within the year preceding service of the notice.  Although the landlord usually serves a notice to pay rent or quit within a relatively short period after rent is due and unpaid, problems may arise under this statute – primarily as a result of the landlord’s accounting procedures.

For example:  If a tenant fails to pay the March 2009 rent, but ten pays the April rent, the landlord may credit the tenant for paying the April rent, and consider the March rent to be unpaid.  After one year has passed, if the landlord shows the March 2009 rent to be still unpaid but the tenant to be otherwise current, an unlawful detainer action based on nonpayment of the March rent is now precluded.  Had the landlord followed the more common practice of considering the payments to be late each month, after one year the tenant would be late on the last month’s payment and would not invalidate the notice.  CCP Section 1161(2).

A more complicated problem arises if the tenant in this example stops paying rent altogether in April 2010 and the landlord serves a three day notice in June.  Presumably, if the three day notice includes a demand for the March 2009 rent as well as the April and May 2010 rent payments, the entire notice would be ineffective under the rule that the noitce must demand the extact amount due.

Because each periodic monthly rental payment is a severable contractual obligation, the statute of limitations begins to run on each monthly payment from the time it is due.