Semantics? February has 28/29 days. How does 30 Day Notice work?

Question

A question about a 30 Day Notice for a Month to Month tenancy brought up a question. This year, February has 29 days, but 75% of the time only has 28 days. Does a 30-Day notice on January 31 mean tenancy ends at the end of February, or are you obligated to wait until the end of March due to the calendar?

Obviously you can just plan ahead to make sure you're giving 30 actual days notice, but I'm wondering if, in some of the more tenant-friendly states, this messes you up?

Jacob Humiston · Answer

I believe a 30 day notice is a "Month's notice". However I can see all tenants arguing 30 calendar days, to benefit themselves and it would be hard to defend. I would say your best bet is to stick to an actual "30 calendar" day notice, and to specify that in your lease agreements. I'm using my experience from gov contracting and have 0 experience in real estate investing...yet.

Stephen Shelton · Answer

At my "day job" we have a lot of legalise to provide to customers and sometimes they question a gray area. I always fall back to the literal meaning of the words and not the implied intent because what seems like a gray area to a regular person will be black-and-white to a lawyer.

If it says 30 days I would literally treat it as 30 days. Err on the side of caution.

I also hate it when things are measured in months since a month is not a defined period of time.

Chris Coleman · Answer

@Mindy Jensen go with the advice of both @Jacob Humiston and @Stephen Shelton, if it says “30 days” then literally count 30 days on the calendar.  In contract terms, 30 days does not mean one month. It means 30 days, which could start or end on any date of the month.

Sandra Page · Answer

I believe it really depends on location.  Here in Duval Co. (very tenant friendly), all legal notices (3 day, 7, day, etc) count by business days only, not holidays and weekends.  Most tenants served a notice for longer than 7 days do not know this BUT can fight it in court if they choose to.  Just to be sure, I would call either a process server or the county court office and ask.  A thrown out eviction here costs us $470 so better safe than sorry.  Hope this helps.

Tyrell Lewis · Answer

NY is a very friendly tenant state and the 30 day notice to vacate "Notice of Termination" has to end on the last date of the rental period.

If you're trying to terminate a lease because a tenant did something not allowed in the lease then you must first serve a Notice to Cure in which they have 10 days to fix whatever problem that caused the serving of the notice. If they don't fix the problem then you must serve a Notice of Termination as immediately as possible.

If you collect rent after the termination date then it restarts the tenancy and the tenant can file a motion with a judge at which point your case will be dismissed.

So if they were served a Notice to Cure on Jan 2nd, they would have until the 12th to fix it. IF you then served them a Notice of Termination on the 13th, they would essentially have the rest of Jan and all of Feb until the last day before March 1st since the 30 days would put them in the middle of a rental period.

So in this case the tenant would have essentially 56/57 days to vacate.

Nicholas Myler · Answer

Despite the fact that February 2020 has just 29 days, the calculation to decide customized lease is equivalent to if there were 29, 30 or 31 days.

Semantics? February has 28/29 days. How does 30 Day Notice work?

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