Rule 6.Time

Rule 6(a) supplies the default method for counting any time period set by the civil rules, a local rule, a court order, or a statute that doesn't specify its own method. For periods stated in days, the triggering day is excluded from the count, every day counts — including weekends and holidays — and the last day counts too, unless it falls on a Saturday, Sunday, or legal holiday, in which case the period runs until the end of the next day that isn't one of those. Periods stated in hours work similarly: counting starts immediately when the triggering event occurs, every hour counts including those on weekends and holidays, and a period that would end on a weekend or holiday instead runs until the same time on the next business day. If the clerk's office is inaccessible on the last day for filing, the deadline extends to the next accessible day that isn't a weekend or holiday. And "filing on the last day" has its own cutoff: before midnight for electronic filing, or before the clerk's office is scheduled to close for other filing methods. The rule also lists the legal holidays that count toward these computations, from New Year's Day and Juneteenth through Pioneer Day, Thanksgiving, and Christmas, plus any day the Governor or Legislature designates as a holiday.

Rule 6(b) gives courts room to extend deadlines for good cause — either before the original deadline (or an earlier extension) expires, with or without a motion, or after the deadline has passed if the party's failure to act resulted from excusable neglect. That flexibility has real limits, though: a court cannot extend the time to act under several post-trial and post-judgment rules — Rule 50(b) and (d), Rule 52(b), Rule 59(b), (d), and (e), and Rule 60(c) — deadlines the rules treat as fixed regardless of the circumstances.

Three more provisions adjust the clock for particular situations. Rule 6(c) adds seven days to a deadline when a party's time to act runs from service made exclusively by mail. Rule 6(d) protects unrepresented parties without an e-filing account by counting their response time from the date they were served with a paper, rather than the date it was filed with the court. And Rule 6(e) applies a mailbox rule for inmates: a paper is timely filed or served if deposited in the institution's internal mail system by the deadline, which can be shown through a notarized statement or written declaration describing the deposit date and postage, with the response clock running from the date the court receives the papers, or from the postmark date for papers served on parties but not filed with the court. That inmate mailbox rule does not apply to service of process, which stays governed by Rule 4.