When Is Your Response to a California Complaint Due?

Thirty days, and almost everyone counts them from the wrong day. Code of Civil Procedure section 412.20(a)(3) requires the summons to direct the defendant to respond “within 30 days after summons is served.” The 30 days runs from the date service is legally complete, and completion is defined separately for each method of service.

The method of service moves the date

Personal delivery is complete at the moment of delivery (section 415.10), so there the 30 days really is 30 days. Substituted service, where the papers are left with someone and then mailed, is complete on the 10th day after that mailing (section 415.20(b)), which makes the response due 40 days from the mailing, not 30. Mail to a defendant outside California works the same way (section 415.40). Service by notice and acknowledgment is complete on the date the acknowledgment is executed (section 415.30(c)), a date no calculator can derive, so this one asks you for it.

The error runs in both directions. Count 30 from the day the papers arrived after substituted service and you file ten days early, which costs nothing but time. Assume you had 40 when you were served personally and you are in default.

The five-day mail extension does not apply here

If you calendar discovery, this will feel wrong. In discovery, mail service adds five calendar days under section 1013 and that is the whole game. For a summons it is forbidden: section 413.20 provides that where a summons is served by mail, the section 1013 extensions “shall not extend any time specified in this title.” The completion rules above are where that time is already accounted for. Adding section 1013 on top would double count.

Two extensions you do not need a judge for

The parties may stipulate to one 15-day extension without leave of court under rule of court 3.110(d). Separately, if you could not meet and confer at least five days before your response was due, section 430.41(a)(2) grants an automatic 30-day extension of the time to file a responsive pleading, on filing a declaration saying so. No court order. Section 435.5(a)(2) does the same before a motion to strike.

Three limits worth knowing, because each one has caught practitioners. The declaration has to be filed on or before the original due date. The extension runs from that original date rather than from the day you file, so filing late buys nothing. And the two automatic extensions are concurrent, not consecutive: both measure from the same original due date, so filing both declarations does not produce 60 days. Any further extension needs a court order on good cause, and section 1054(a) caps a court extension at 30 days without the other side’s consent.

Unlawful detainer runs on a different clock

Section 1167 gives the defendant 10 days, excluding Saturdays, Sundays and judicial holidays, plus an additional five court days where service was by mail or through the Secretary of State’s address confidentiality program. That is why the case type is the first control on the calculator rather than a warning underneath it: a general civil answer handed to an unlawful detainer defendant lands about three weeks after their default can be entered.

The same date governs your other options

An answer is not the only response. The date this page gives you is also the last day to demur (section 430.40(a)), to move to strike (section 435(b)(1)) and to move to quash service of summons (section 418.10(a)). The last two say in terms that they run on the time allowed to respond. For the hearing chain on any of those motions, the 16, 9 and 5 court days under section 1005(b), use the civil motion deadline calculator. Every date here rolls forward past weekends and California court holidays automatically under section 12a.

Related: Civil motion deadlines · Discovery response deadlines · California court holidays · How these rules were verified