What late fees can a landlord charge in Montana?

Verified July 11, 2026 All Montana topics →

Montana sets no cap on residential late fees and mandates no grace period — rent is payable without demand or notice at the time the lease fixes (Mont.

Code Ann. 70-24-201(3)), and the statutes acknowledge late fees only to define them as part of 'rent' when agreed on in the rental agreement. A fee's enforceability therefore rests on the lease and ordinary contract law, with a court able to strike an unconscionable clause under 70-24-404. What Montana DID regulate, effective June 9, 2025, is payment-method fees: a landlord may not charge any additional fee based on the tenant's rent payment type — cash, check, or electronic — except to pass through an actual electronic bank fee (70-24-201(4), HB 810). The three-business-day pay-or-quit notice in Montana's eviction statute is a termination cure window, not a rent grace period, and for mobile-home lots three late payments in a year can support a 30-day termination notice.

Montana 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	Not addressed by statute; a daily late fee would be a lease term bounded only by the unconscionability backstop (70-24-404), the statutory good-faith obligation (70-24-109), and ordinary contract/liquidated-damages principles.
Reasonableness standard	No statutory cap, formula, or reasonableness standard for late fees — the Residential Landlord and Tenant Act of 1977 acknowledges late fees without limiting them: 'rent' is defined to include 'late fees, or other charges as agreed on in the rental agreement' (70-24-103(14)), and late charges and lease penalties are deductible from the security deposit (70-25-201(1)). The only brakes are 70-24-404 (court may refuse to enforce an unconscionable rental-agreement provision, though since a 2021 amendment unconscionability may not be premised on the parties' statutory maintenance duties) and the 70-24-109 obligation of good faith. No Montana appellate decision fixing a late-fee formula was found.

Notes and caveats

statutory_cap and grace_period_days null: verified negative — complete section-title sweep of ch. 24 parts 1-4 and ch. 25 parts 1-2 (all indexes enumerated; every fee-plausible section read in full) found no late-fee amount, timing, or formula provision; run twice. must_be_in_lease null rather than true: no statute expressly conditions late fees on a written lease; the hook is definitional — 70-24-103(14) counts late fees as rent only 'as agreed on in the rental agreement' (that phrase added by HB 541, Ch. 536, L. 2021, effective 2021-05-14), and 70-24-201(1) permits any term 'not prohibited.' LEAD CORRECTION: the unconscionability section is 70-24-404, not 70-24-403 (403 provides up-to-3-months'-rent damages for knowingly using a lease provision prohibited by 70-24-202, whose list does not address fees). New law rendered here but distinct from late fees: 70-24-201(4) (HB 810, Ch. 768, L. 2025, effective on approval 2025-06-09 per the official bill-status history) bans payment-type surcharges except recouping an electronic bank fee; parallel rule for mobile-home lots at 70-33-201(4). Grace-period traps debunked: 70-24-422(2)'s 3-day nonpayment cure and 70-33-433(1)(a)'s 7-day mobile-home-lot notice are eviction procedure, not fee grace periods; 70-33-433(1)(d) (3+ late payments in 12 months -> 30-day termination) is a lot-rental termination ground. Definition point for collections copy: because lease-based late fees are 'rent,' they are deductible from the deposit (70-25-201(1)) and covered by rent remedies.

Statute citations

Mont. Code Ann. § 70-24-103 (14) Official source
Mont. Code Ann. § 70-24-201 (3), (4) Official source
Mont. Code Ann. § 70-24-404 (1)-(3) Official source
Mont. Code Ann. § 70-25-201 (1) Official source
HB 810, 2025 Mont. Laws ch. 768 (payment-type fee ban; status and chapter via official api.legmt.gov) secs. 1-2 Official source

How this record was verified: Direct read of statute text on the official Montana Code Annotated site (mca.legmt.gov, MCA 2025 edition): all nine sections of Title 70 ch. 25 and sections 70-24-103, -108, -201, -202, -312, -403, -404, -410, -422, -441 plus 7-1-111 and 1-2-201, each load-bearing section fetched twice in independent reads (WebFetch pass + raw HTML pass) with all figures matching verbatim (30-day/10-day deposit return, 24-hour cleaning cure window, certified-mail 3-day service rule, 24 hours' entry notice, 30-day/7-day periodic termination notice, rent-control preemption text). Every amendment claim additionally pinned character-for-character from official enrolled bills downloaded via the Legislature's document API (docs.legmt.gov): HB 444 (2025, Ch. 656) and HB 488 (2023, Ch. 383) for 70-25-201/-202, HB 810 (2025, Ch. 768) for 70-24-103/-201, HB 541 (2021, Ch. 536) for 70-24-312/70-24-201/70-25-201, SB 105 (2023, Ch. 319) and HB 283 (2023, Ch. 572) for 7-1-111; chapter numbers pinned from the official bill-to-chapter tables (archive.legmt.gov MCA Supplements). Bill status/signing dates read from the official api.legmt.gov bill-status history for 2025 bills (HB 444 signed 2025-05-12; HB 810 signed 2025-06-09) and corroborated via Montana Free Press Capitol Tracker for 2021/2023 bills. Negative checks (no deposit cap, no interest or separate-account rule, no rent-increase notice statute, no late-fee cap or grace period) run twice against the complete section indexes of ch. 24 parts 1-4 and ch. 25 parts 1-2. 2025 session sweep: HB 444 and HB 810 enacted and effective (incorporated); HB 304, HB 277, HB 305, HB 306 died in committee; 69th Legislature adjourned, next regular session January 2027; no on-topic special-session activity.