The Michigan breach of contract statute of limitations gives you six years to sue on most agreements and four years on contracts for the sale of goods. The clock starts the day the breach happens, not the day you find out about it. Miss the deadline and your claim is almost always dead, no matter how strong it would have been on the merits.
Six Years for Most Contracts
Michigan Compiled Laws § 600.5807 sets the six-year window for filing a breach of contract lawsuit.1Michigan Legislature. Michigan Compiled Laws 600.5807 It covers written contracts, oral agreements, professional services deals, leases, personal loans, and employment contracts. Michigan treats oral and written contracts the same for limitations purposes, which simplifies the analysis but means a written document doesn’t buy you extra time.
Four Years for Sales of Goods
If the dispute involves buying or selling physical, movable items, the deadline shrinks. MCL § 440.2725, Michigan’s version of the Uniform Commercial Code, gives you four years.2Michigan Legislature. Michigan Compiled Laws 440.2725 – Statute of Limitations in Contracts for Sale This rule applies to retail purchases and commercial inventory orders alike. It does not apply to service contracts, real estate, or mixed contracts where the service component dominates.
The UCC uses a delivery-based accrual rule for warranty claims: the clock usually starts when the seller delivers the goods, even if the defect surfaces later. The exception is a warranty that explicitly guarantees future performance. If a manufacturer warrants that equipment will last five years and it fails in year three, the four-year countdown begins at the discovery of the failure rather than at delivery.
Parties to a sales contract can agree in the original agreement to shorten the four-year period to as little as one year, but they cannot extend it past four.2Michigan Legislature. Michigan Compiled Laws 440.2725 – Statute of Limitations in Contracts for Sale A one-year clause in your purchase agreement is the window you have.
When the Clock Starts
Michigan uses what lawyers call the breach rule. MCL § 600.5827 says a claim accrues “at the time the wrong upon which the claim is based was done regardless of the time when damage results.”3Michigan Legislature. Michigan Compiled Laws 600.5827 – Accrual of Claim A missed payment due March 1, 2020 starts the clock on March 1, 2020, and the window closes March 1, 2026. It doesn’t matter that you didn’t notice until 2023 or that losses piled up over time. This trips people up more than almost anything else in Michigan contract law, because states that use a discovery rule work very differently.
Installment Payments and Recurring Obligations
Contracts calling for periodic payments or performance behave a little differently. Each missed installment can be a separate breach with its own six-year clock. If a borrower defaults in January 2021, then again in February and March, each missed payment is its own accrual date. You could lose the right to collect the January payment while still being able to sue over the later ones. The flip side: don’t sit on early defaults. Once the oldest ones age past six years, those dollars are gone even if newer defaults remain alive.
What Can Pause or Extend the Deadline
A handful of statutes toll the clock or add filing time. Michigan courts read them narrowly.
Minors and Mental Incapacity
If the person entitled to sue was under 18 or legally insane when the breach occurred, MCL § 600.5851 gives them one year after the disability ends to file, even if the normal deadline has already run. The disability has to exist at the moment the claim accrues. Becoming incapacitated later doesn’t qualify. Michigan defines “insane” here as a mental condition severe enough to prevent someone from understanding their legal rights, and no court order is required.4Michigan Legislature. Michigan Compiled Laws 600.5851
Defendant Out of State
Under MCL § 600.5853, if the person who breached is outside Michigan when the claim arises, the limitations period doesn’t begin until they enter the state. If they leave afterward, any absence longer than two months at a stretch doesn’t count toward the six years.5Michigan Legislature. Michigan Compiled Laws 600.5853 – Absence From State There’s a major catch: this tolling only applies when no means of serving them with legal process exists while they’re away. Modern long-arm jurisdiction rules often let Michigan courts reach out-of-state defendants, which can neutralize this provision entirely.
Fraudulent Concealment
If someone actively hides the existence of your claim or the identity of the person responsible, MCL § 600.5855 gives you two years from the date you discover (or should have discovered) the concealed information.6Michigan Legislature. Michigan Compiled Laws 600.5855 This isn’t a rescue for plaintiffs who weren’t paying attention. The defendant must have done something affirmatively deceptive. Simply staying quiet about a breach is not enough unless the defendant had a duty to disclose.
Shorter Deadlines Written Into the Contract
Plenty of contracts set their own filing window well below six years. Insurance policies, employment agreements, and commercial contracts commonly impose one-year or even six-month deadlines. Michigan courts long enforced these clauses as a matter of contractual freedom.
That shifted in 2025. In Rayford v. American House, the Michigan Supreme Court held that shortened limitation periods in non-negotiated, take-it-or-leave-it agreements are no longer automatically enforceable. Courts now apply heightened scrutiny to these clauses, especially in employment contexts, looking at whether the shortened period leaves a realistic chance to investigate and file, whether it effectively eliminates the right to sue, and whether it bars the claim before the harm can reasonably be discovered.
Shortened deadlines in negotiated commercial contracts between businesses of comparable bargaining power remain broadly enforceable. The question is whether both sides had a real opportunity to negotiate the term. A clause buried in a standardized application form draws much more skepticism than one worked out between companies with lawyers on both sides. In any setting, a limitation clause that shocks the conscience or was accepted under pressure can still be challenged as unconscionable.
What Happens If the Deadline Passes
An expired deadline does not automatically kill a lawsuit. The statute of limitations is an affirmative defense the defendant has to raise in their answer. If they don’t raise it, the court won’t dismiss the case on its own. Competent defense attorneys rarely miss this, but the distinction matters: a time-barred claim can still be filed and may proceed if nobody objects.
If you’re on the receiving end of a lawsuit that looks time-barred, assert the defense early in your responsive pleading. Waiting can waive it, leaving you to litigate a claim you could have had thrown out.