Michigan’s small claims statute of limitations is generally six years for contract and money claims and three years for personal injury or property damage, counted from the date the dispute arose. Medical malpractice claims carry a shorter two-year deadline. Miss the window that applies to your claim and you lose the right to sue on it, no matter how strong the underlying facts are.
Deadlines by Type of Claim
The deadline that governs your case depends on the legal category of the dispute, not what you’d casually call it. A fight over a security deposit is a contract claim. A neighbor’s tree falling on your fence is a property damage claim. Getting the category right is the whole ballgame.
Breach of contract — 6 years. If someone owes you money under an agreement and refuses to pay, you have six years from the date they broke their promise. Michigan treats oral and written contracts the same for this purpose.1Michigan Legislature. Michigan Compiled Laws 600.5807 – Damages for Breach of Contract Unpaid personal loans, broken service agreements, security deposit disputes, and similar deal-gone-wrong situations all fall here.
Personal injury and property damage — 3 years. If someone’s carelessness damaged your property or caused you physical harm, the deadline is three years from the date of the injury or damage.2Michigan Legislature. Michigan Compiled Laws 600.5805 – Injuries to Persons or Property Car accidents, a contractor who damaged your home, a dog bite. Three years sounds like plenty of time until you’ve spent two of them trying to negotiate.
Medical malpractice — 2 years. Claims against healthcare providers carry a two-year deadline from the date of the injury.2Michigan Legislature. Michigan Compiled Laws 600.5805 – Injuries to Persons or Property A separate discovery rule lets you file within six months of when you learned or should have learned about the malpractice, whichever gives you more time.3Michigan Legislature. Michigan Compiled Laws 600.5838a – Claim Based on Medical Malpractice In practice most malpractice cases are too complex to fit in small claims, but if yours is under $7,000 the deadline still matters.
Other personal actions — 6 years. Michigan law provides a catch-all six-year deadline for personal actions that don’t fit the categories above, covering disputes like unjust enrichment or conversion of property.
When the Clock Starts Running
Your deadline begins on the date the wrong actually happened, not when you decided to do something about it. Lawyers call this “accrual.” For a car accident, the clock starts the day of the crash. For an unpaid debt, it starts the day the payment was due and didn’t arrive. The statute requires the claim to be filed within the limitation period after it “first accrued.”2Michigan Legislature. Michigan Compiled Laws 600.5805 – Injuries to Persons or Property
The main exception is the discovery rule, which applies when the harm wasn’t immediately obvious. Under that rule, the clock starts when you knew or reasonably should have known about the injury. Michigan applies this most explicitly in medical malpractice cases, where a patient might not realize something went wrong during a procedure until symptoms appear months later.3Michigan Legislature. Michigan Compiled Laws 600.5838a – Claim Based on Medical Malpractice For standard contract and property damage claims, courts generally look at the objective date the harm occurred.
Events That Can Pause the Deadline
A few situations freeze the countdown and buy you more time. They’re narrow, not open-ended safety nets.
The person with the claim is a minor or mentally incapacitated. If the plaintiff was under 18 or legally incapacitated when the claim arose, they get one year after the disability ends to file, even if the normal deadline has already passed. The disability has to exist at the time the claim first arises; developing one later doesn’t help.4Michigan Legislature. Michigan Compiled Laws 600.5851 – Disabilities of Infancy or Insanity
The defendant leaves Michigan. If the person you need to sue leaves the state for stretches longer than two months at a time, those absent periods don’t count toward the deadline. The rationale: you shouldn’t lose your right to sue because the defendant made themselves hard to serve. This tolling doesn’t apply if you had another way to serve them with legal papers while they were out of state.5Michigan Legislature. Michigan Code 600.5853 – Absence From State
The defendant hid the claim from you. If someone actively concealed the existence of the claim or their own identity, you get two years from the date you discovered or should have discovered the fraud to file, even if the normal deadline has expired.6Michigan Legislature. Michigan Code 600.5855 – Fraudulent Concealment of Claim or Identity of Person Liable Staying quiet about a debt isn’t concealment. The defendant has to have taken active steps to hide the claim, and you need to show you were reasonably diligent in trying to uncover it.
What Happens If You File Too Late
An expired deadline doesn’t automatically get your case tossed. The statute of limitations is an affirmative defense, meaning the defendant has to raise it. If they don’t, the case proceeds normally. In reality, almost any defendant with basic awareness will raise it, and once they do, the court will dismiss your claim. There’s no hardship exception, no amount of compelling evidence that overrides an expired deadline.
The practical lesson is simple. If you’re within a few months of your deadline, file first and keep negotiating afterward. Filing stops the clock as long as you serve the defendant within the time required by court rules.7Michigan Legislature. Michigan Compiled Laws 600.5856 – Tolling of Statutes of Limitations You can always settle or voluntarily dismiss a case once it’s filed. You can’t un-expire a deadline.
One More Deadline: Enforcing Your Judgment
The statute of limitations clock doesn’t stop running once you win. A small claims judgment gives you the right to collect through tools like wage garnishment or bank levies, and that right has its own expiration date.
Small claims judgments are not treated as “court of record” judgments under Michigan law. They carry a six-year enforcement window rather than the ten-year period that applies to regular district court judgments.8Michigan Legislature. Michigan Compiled Laws 600.5809 – Action to Enforce Judgment If you win a small claims case against someone who doesn’t want to pay, don’t sit on the judgment. Six years moves faster than you’d think.