The Utah statute of limitations sets how long you have to file a civil lawsuit or how long prosecutors have to bring criminal charges, and the window depends entirely on the type of case. Written contract disputes get six years. Personal injury gets four. Wrongful death and medical malpractice get two. Misdemeanors get two years and infractions get one. Some serious crimes, including murder and rape, have no deadline at all. Missing the applicable deadline almost always ends the case, so the specific rule matters more than any general timeline.
Civil Deadlines at a Glance
Utah’s civil deadlines are scattered across several statutes, but they group cleanly by the kind of harm involved.
Contract Disputes
A lawsuit on a written contract must be filed within six years.1Utah Legislature. Utah Code 78B-2-309 – Within Six Years – Mesne Profits of Real Property – Instrument in Writing – Fire Suppression Oral contracts drop to four years.2Utah Legislature. Utah Code 78B-2-307 – Within Four Years
For written contracts, the six-year clock starts on the later of the date the debt arose, the date the debtor made a written acknowledgment of the debt, or the date someone made a payment on it.1Utah Legislature. Utah Code 78B-2-309 – Within Six Years – Mesne Profits of Real Property – Instrument in Writing – Fire Suppression A partial payment can reset the clock on an otherwise stale debt.
Contracts for the sale of goods run on a separate track. Under Utah’s version of the Uniform Commercial Code, the deadline is four years from the breach, written or oral. The parties can shorten this to as little as one year by agreement, but they cannot extend it beyond four.3Utah Legislature. Utah Code 70A-2-725 – Statute of Limitations in Contracts for Sale
Injury Claims
Most personal injury lawsuits, including car accidents and slip-and-fall cases, must be filed within four years. That window comes from the catch-all in Utah Code 78B-2-307(4), which covers any claim “not otherwise provided for by law.”2Utah Legislature. Utah Code 78B-2-307 – Within Four Years
Medical malpractice is shorter: two years from when you discovered the injury or reasonably should have discovered it, with a hard outer cap of four years from the alleged malpractice. Two narrow exceptions extend that: a foreign object left inside a patient gives you one year from discovery of the object, and active concealment by the provider gives you one year from discovery of the concealment.4Utah Legislature. Utah Code 78B-3-404 – Statute of Limitations
Wrongful death lawsuits must be filed within two years of the date of death, not the date of the act that caused it.5Utah Legislature. Utah Code 78B-2-304 – Within Two Years
Property Claims
Damage to real or personal property, including trespass and vandalism, carries a three-year deadline.6Utah Legislature. Utah Code 78B-2-305 – Within Three Years Damage to a motor vehicle or to personal property from a motor vehicle accident is the exception and gets four years.2Utah Legislature. Utah Code 78B-2-307 – Within Four Years
Fraud and mistake claims also get three years, but the clock does not start until you discover the facts behind the fraud.6Utah Legislature. Utah Code 78B-2-305 – Within Three Years If you were deceived in a property transfer and did not learn about it for five years, your three-year window opens when you found out.
Adverse possession involves a seven-year threshold. Someone claiming ownership of another person’s real property through adverse possession must show at least seven years of continuous possession to overcome the presumption that the titled owner has been in possession.7Utah Legislature. Utah Code 78B-2-208 – Adverse Possession – Possession Presumed in Owner
Claims Against a Government Entity
Suing a state or local government in Utah runs on a tighter schedule with an extra step. You must submit a formal notice of claim within one year after the claim arises.8Utah Legislature. Utah Code 63G-7-402 – Claim Against a Governmental Entity or Employee After filing the notice, you wait at least 60 days before suing, and the lawsuit itself must be filed within two years of when the claim arose.9Utah Legislature. Utah Code 63G-7-403 – Notifying of the Receipt of a Notice of Claim – Action in District Court Missing the one-year notice deadline bars the claim, even if the two-year lawsuit deadline is still open. This one catches people off guard more than almost any other rule in Utah civil practice.
Criminal Deadlines
Crimes With No Time Limit
A substantial list of Utah offenses can be prosecuted at any time. It includes murder, manslaughter, child abuse homicide, aggravated kidnapping, child kidnapping, rape, rape of a child, object rape, forcible sodomy, sodomy on a child, sexual abuse of a child, aggravated sexual abuse of a child, aggravated sexual assault, aggravated human trafficking, and human trafficking of a child.10Utah Legislature. Utah Code 76-1-301 – Offenses for Which Prosecution May Be Commenced at Any Time Any offense that serves as a predicate to murder or an aggravating factor in aggravated murder also has no deadline. If a charge is on this list, no tolling or discovery analysis is needed.
Felonies With Time Limits
For felonies not on the unlimited list, the standard prosecution deadline is four years from the date the crime was committed.11Utah Legislature. Utah Code 76-1-302 – Time Limitations for Prosecution of Offenses This covers most property crimes, drug offenses, and non-sexual violent felonies.
Two sex offenses that are not on the unlimited list get an extended eight-year window: forcible sexual abuse and incest. That eight-year deadline only applies if the offense was reported to law enforcement within four years of being committed. If it was not reported in that initial four-year window, the standard four-year felony deadline applies instead.11Utah Legislature. Utah Code 76-1-302 – Time Limitations for Prosecution of Offenses
Fraud and public corruption cases carry a special extension. If the normal deadline has already expired, prosecutors can still bring charges within one year after the offense is reported to law enforcement, capped at three years beyond the original limit. For public officers and employees, prosecution can also begin at any time during their tenure and up to two years after they leave office, again capped at three additional years.12Utah Legislature. Utah Code 76-1-303 – Time Limitations for Fraud or Breach of Fiduciary Obligation – Misconduct of Public Officer or Employee
Misdemeanors and Infractions
All misdemeanors must be prosecuted within two years, regardless of classification. Class A, Class B, and Class C misdemeanors share the same window. Infractions carry a one-year deadline.11Utah Legislature. Utah Code 76-1-302 – Time Limitations for Prosecution of Offenses
When the Clock Starts
For most civil claims, the clock starts on the date the harm occurred or the contract was breached. For most criminal cases, it starts the day the crime was committed.
Utah does not have a single, stand-alone discovery rule that applies across all civil cases. Discovery-based accrual is built into individual limitation statutes. Fraud and mistake claims under Utah Code 78B-2-305 do not accrue until you discover the facts behind the fraud.6Utah Legislature. Utah Code 78B-2-305 – Within Three Years Medical malpractice claims accrue when you discover or should have discovered the injury.4Utah Legislature. Utah Code 78B-3-404 – Statute of Limitations
The common thread is reasonable diligence. You cannot sit on obvious warning signs and later claim you did not know about the injury. Courts expect you to investigate once you have information that would put a reasonable person on notice. If you ignore red flags, a court may rule the clock started when you should have discovered the problem, not when you actually did.
What Pauses or Extends the Deadline
Several circumstances stop the clock from running.
Age and Mental Incapacity
If the person with a civil claim is under 18 or mentally incompetent without a legal guardian, the statute of limitations does not run during that period. Once the person turns 18 or a guardian is appointed, the clock starts.13Utah Legislature. Utah Code 78B-2-108 – Effect of Disability – Minority or Mental Incompetence – Damages Criminal statutes have their own rules for crimes against minors, including the no-time-limit provisions above.
Defendant Absent From Utah
In criminal cases, the limitation period stops running whenever the defendant is out of state after committing the offense. If someone commits a felony and moves out of state for three years, those three years do not count toward the four-year deadline.14Utah Legislature. Utah Code 76-1-304 – Defendant Out of State – Plea Held Invalid – New Prosecutions
DNA Evidence
When the identity of a criminal suspect is unknown but DNA evidence has been collected, prosecution for certain serious offenses can be commenced at any time. Once a suspect is identified through DNA, prosecutors have four years from confirming the identification to file charges.11Utah Legislature. Utah Code 76-1-302 – Time Limitations for Prosecution of Offenses This provision does not apply retroactively to crimes where the statute of limitations had already expired before May 5, 2003.
Active Military Service
Under the federal Servicemembers Civil Relief Act, time spent on active military duty does not count toward any state statute of limitations, whether the servicemember is the plaintiff or the defendant.15Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 50 USC 3936 – Statute of Limitations The protection applies automatically.
Statutes of Repose Are Different
A statute of repose is not the same as a statute of limitations, and confusing them is an expensive mistake. A statute of limitations starts when you discover the harm. A statute of repose sets an absolute outer deadline measured from a fixed event, and delayed discovery cannot extend it.
Utah imposes a statute of repose on claims related to improvements to real property. Actions based on defective design or construction must be brought within two years of discovering the problem, but no more than nine years after substantial completion of the improvement. If the defect is discovered in the eighth or ninth year, you still get two years from discovery. Claims based on contract or warranty have a separate six-year deadline from completion.16Utah Legislature. Utah Code 78B-2-225 – Actions Related to Improvements in Real Property Fraudulent concealment by the contractor is an exception.
The four-year outer cap on medical malpractice claims works the same way. Even if you do not discover the injury within four years, your claim is barred unless the provider actively concealed the malpractice.4Utah Legislature. Utah Code 78B-3-404 – Statute of Limitations
What Happens If You Miss the Deadline
In civil cases, missing the statute of limitations is almost always fatal. A defendant can raise it as a defense, and courts will dismiss the case regardless of how strong the underlying evidence is. There is no discretion.
In criminal cases, an expired deadline bars prosecution entirely. Even a full confession cannot revive a time-barred charge unless a tolling provision applies. Prosecutors occasionally file charges without realizing the window has closed, so checking the deadline is worthwhile in any defense.
Debt collection sits in a gray area. A creditor who misses the statute of limitations on a contract claim loses the ability to sue. Under federal rules, third-party debt collectors who sue or threaten to sue on time-barred debt violate the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act. They can still attempt to collect through phone calls or letters, but they cannot threaten legal action once the deadline has passed.