Is there a legal limit on late fees in Kentucky?

No statutory cap (see reasonableness standard and notes). There is no statutory reasonableness standard in Kentucky. Where the URLTA has been adopted a court may refuse to enforce an unconscionable lease provision, but the bar is high; statewide, the only other check is the ordinary contract rule against penalty clauses.

Can a landlord charge a daily late fee in Kentucky?

No Kentucky statute addresses daily late fees, so they stand or fall on the lease. Where the URLTA has been adopted, the only checks are the unconscionability doctrine and the act's short list of banned lease clauses, which does not mention late fees.

What late fees can a landlord charge in Kentucky?

Verified July 10, 2026 All Kentucky topics →

Measure that did not become law. The following recent proposal failed and is not law — noted here because failed bills are sometimes still described as if enacted:

HB 340 (2026 RS) — 'AN ACT relating to termination of residential leases' — Would have created early-termination rights (new sections of KRS ch. 383) for 'medically fragile' tenants (30 days' notice plus medical documentation), tenants 60+ or disabled on the death of a spouse or cotenant (60 days' notice), and tenants facing unabated lead hazards. Does not touch deposits, entry, late fees, or rent-increase rules, but it was the session's principal landlord-tenant bill and a likely refile.Status: Dead. Referred to House Judiciary 2026-01-21 with no further action; the 2026 Regular Session adjourned sine die 2026-04-15. No 2026 bill amending KRS 383.500-383.715, 383.195, or 65.875 was found; the perennial statewide-URLTA bills (2017 HB 510, 2018 HB 550, 2021 HB 595) were not refiled in 2026 — a future statewide-URLTA enactment would rescope every topic on this page and is the top KY watch item. (checked 2026-07-09).

Kentucky has no statutory cap on residential late fees and no mandatory grace period — neither in the jurisdictions that have adopted the state's optional Uniform Residential Landlord and Tenant Act nor in the rest of the state, where no landlord-tenant fee statute exists at all.

Cited to KRS 383.565 (rent payable without demand or notice; lease may set terms) (1)-(2) and 2 more Kentucky statutes · Verified July 10, 2026

In URLTA jurisdictions (Louisville, Lexington, and other documented adopters), rent is payable without demand or notice on the agreed date, the lease may include any term not prohibited, and the act's short list of banned lease clauses does not mention late fees; the only statutory backstop is a court's power to strike an unconscionable provision. Two deadlines are commonly confused with a grace period: the URLTA's 7-day pay-or-quit notice before a landlord may terminate for nonpayment, and its rule letting a landlord end a post-lease holdover tenancy without notice once rent is 10 days late — both are eviction rules, not fee rules. Outside URLTA territory the lease governs entirely, checked only by the common-law rule against penalty clauses.

Kentucky late fees at a glance

Statutory cap	No statutory cap (see reasonableness standard and notes)
Mandatory grace period	None mandated statewide
Must be in the lease	Not addressed by statute
Daily fees	No Kentucky statute addresses daily late fees, so they stand or fall on the lease. Where the URLTA has been adopted, the only checks are the unconscionability doctrine and the act's short list of banned lease clauses, which does not mention late fees. In URLTA jurisdictions any fee owed under the lease is 'rent' by definition (KRS 383.545(10)), and lease terms are constrained only by the unconscionability doctrine (KRS 383.555) and the short prohibited-provisions list (KRS 383.570), which does not mention late fees. Outside URLTA jurisdictions, only common-law penalty/liquidated-damages doctrine applies.
Reasonableness standard	There is no statutory reasonableness standard in Kentucky. Where the URLTA has been adopted a court may refuse to enforce an unconscionable lease provision, but the bar is high; statewide, the only other check is the ordinary contract rule against penalty clauses. In URLTA jurisdictions a court may refuse to enforce an unconscionable lease provision (KRS 383.555) — a high bar defined at KRS 383.545(16) as willful conduct 'shocking to the conscience.' Statewide, ordinary contract law treats a late charge grossly disproportionate to actual damage as an unenforceable penalty; no Kentucky statute codifies this for residential leases.

Cite this page: "Landlord Atlas, Kentucky Late Fee Laws (verified July 10, 2026), landlordatlas.com/laws/late-fees/kentucky/" — free to cite and quote with a link (how these records are verified). Every figure above is cited to the Kentucky statute in the citations section below.

Check a late fee against the Kentucky rules — free, no signup, built on the same verified Kentucky rules as this page.

Notes and caveats

Why the cap and grace-period fields are blank — The cap and grace-period answers are empty because no provision exists anywhere in KRS — chapter 383 was searched in full, KRS 383.570's prohibited-provisions list is the only lease-content restriction and it omits fees, and no usury-style cap reaches residential late fees.
Why 'must be in lease' is also blank — The 'must be in lease' question is left unanswered to avoid asserting a statutory element that does not exist. As a matter of contract law a fee needs some agreed basis — and in URLTA jurisdictions KRS 383.565(2) makes rent due 'without demand or notice' only 'at the time and place agreed upon' — but no statute conditions late fees on a lease clause.
The '7-day grace period' trap — sites presenting the KRS 383.660(2) 7-day cure notice as a '7-day grace period for late fees' conflate eviction procedure with fee accrual; the same goes for KRS 383.695(3)'s 10-day rule.
Even the eviction-side rules are URLTA-only — as always in Kentucky, even these eviction-side rules (the 7-day and 10-day provisions above) exist only in URLTA jurisdictions.

Common questions: Kentucky late fees

Each answer is the verified value from the table above, restated as a direct answer. Free to quote with a link to this page.

Is there a legal limit on late fees in Kentucky?: No statutory cap (see reasonableness standard and notes). There is no statutory reasonableness standard in Kentucky. Where the URLTA has been adopted a court may refuse to enforce an unconscionable lease provision, but the bar is high; statewide, the only other check is the ordinary contract rule against penalty clauses.
Is there a grace period before rent is late in Kentucky?: None mandated statewide.
Does a late fee have to be written into the lease in Kentucky?: Not addressed by statute.
Can a landlord charge a daily late fee in Kentucky?: No Kentucky statute addresses daily late fees, so they stand or fall on the lease. Where the URLTA has been adopted, the only checks are the unconscionability doctrine and the act's short list of banned lease clauses, which does not mention late fees.

Statute citations

KRS 383.565 (rent payable without demand or notice; lease may set terms) (1)-(2) (verified 2026) Official source
KRS 383.570 (prohibited lease provisions — late fees not among them) (1) (verified 2026) Official source
KRS 383.660 (7-day pay-or-quit is an eviction notice, not a fee grace period) (2) (verified 2026) Official source

How this record was verified: Every section these answers rest on read verbatim from official Kentucky LRC statute PDFs at apps.legislature.ky.gov (KRS 383.500, 383.580, 383.615, 383.695, 383.565, 383.570, 383.660, 383.535, 383.195, 383.198, 383.199, and 65.875), each with an independent second read on the FindLaw mirror (current through 2025-01-01) that matched. A third corroborating read of 383.565/.570/.580/.615/.695 came via the Lexington-Fayette Urban County Human Rights Commission's booklet of Ordinance No. 98-84 (the LFUCG URLTA adoption), whose reproduced text matched. The URLTA adopter list is from the Fort Knox Legal Assistance Office brief (US Army, government source) corroborated by a Kentucky landlord-side attorney's published list; no official registry exists. 2026 Regular Session (adjourned sine die 2026-04-15) swept via official bill pages and the LRC chapter listing, which is current through the 2026 RS and shows no amendments to any section used here. Louisville Metro Code ch. 151 was read directly 2026-07-10 on the American Legal Publishing code library (codelibrary.amlegal.com, supplement 2026 S-47, current through ordinances of 2026-05-20) — § 151.01 titles the chapter the 'Uniform Residential Landlord and Tenant Act' with an express statutory reference to KRS 383.500-383.705, ordinance lineage Jefferson County Ord. 22-1984 (adopted and effective 7-24-1984), recodified as 1994 Jeff. Code ch. 151, continued post-merger by Lou. Metro Am. Ord. No. 134-2006 (approved 8-23-2006); § 151.26 (security deposits) read in full and tracks KRS 383.580 verbatim in substance, including the separate-account/account-number disclosure, signed move-in/move-out damage listings with written dissent, the forfeiture-only penalty, and the 30-day (F) / 60-day (G) TENANT-side windows — confirming the reading given here that those windows are forfeiture rules, not landlord return deadlines. Metro-only additions beyond the URLTA text (eviction-court legal-representation §§ 151.60-151.61) noted and out of v1 scope.