How long does a landlord have to return a security deposit in Kentucky?

No statutory deadline. Kentucky sets no deadline for returning a deposit, and in most of the state there is no deposit statute at all. Where the local government has adopted the URLTA, the only clocks in the statute run against the tenant, not the landlord.

What happens if a landlord does not return the deposit on time in Kentucky?

Forfeiture only, and only where the URLTA has been locally adopted: the landlord loses the right to keep any part of the deposit. Kentucky has no damages multiplier, no bad-faith penalty, and no attorney-fee award for deposit violations.

Do landlords have to pay interest on security deposits in Kentucky?

No — Kentucky does not require interest on the security deposit to be paid to the tenant. KRS 383.580 is silent on interest. It does require the deposit to sit in a dedicated account, and the tenant must be told both where that account is and its account number — a stricter disclosure than most states impose.

What are the security deposit rules 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 statewide security-deposit law: the deposit statute, KRS 383.580, applies only in the cities and counties that have adopted Kentucky's optional Uniform Residential Landlord and Tenant Act by local ordinance — including Louisville-Jefferson County, Lexington-Fayette, Campbell County, Covington, and roughly eighteen other documented adopters — and everywhere else the lease alone governs deposits.

Cited to KRS 383.580 (1)-(7) and 2 more Kentucky statutes · Verified July 10, 2026

Where it does apply, there is no cap on the deposit and no deadline to return it. Instead the landlord must hold the deposit in a dedicated bank account disclosed by location and account number, give the tenant signed itemized damage listings at both move-in and move-out, and mail the departing tenant notice of any refund due — and a tenant who fails to respond within 60 days forfeits the entire refund. A tenant who signs the move-out damage listing without an item-by-item written dissent cannot later sue over those charges. The only penalty for landlord noncompliance is losing the right to withhold; Kentucky awards no double damages and no attorney fees.

Kentucky security deposits at a glance

Maximum deposit	No statutory cap
Return deadline	No statutory deadline
Deadline conditions	Kentucky sets no deadline for returning a deposit, and in most of the state there is no deposit statute at all. Where the local government has adopted the URLTA, the only clocks in the statute run against the tenant, not the landlord. What KRS 383.580 provides instead: if the tenant leaves owing nothing with a refund due, the landlord must send notice of the refund amount to the tenant's last known or reasonably determinable address, and if the TENANT does not respond within 60 days of the sending of that notice, the landlord may remove the deposit from the account and keep it free of any claim (subsection (7)). If the tenant leaves owing the last month's rent without demanding the deposit, the landlord may apply it to the debt after 30 days (subsection (6)). Both clocks run against the tenant. Outside URLTA jurisdictions there is no deposit statute at all — the lease and common law govern.
Itemization required	Yes
Itemization rules	URLTA jurisdictions only. Two mandatory damage listings bracket the tenancy (KRS 383.580(2)-(3)): BEFORE any deposit is tendered, the prospective tenant must receive a comprehensive listing of existing damage with estimated repair costs and may inspect to check it; at termination the landlord must inspect and compile a comprehensive listing of damage charged against the deposit with estimated repair costs, which the tenant may verify by inspection. Both parties sign each listing, and signatures are conclusive evidence of its accuracy (move-in signatures not conclusive as to latent defects); a tenant who refuses to sign must submit a signed, item-by-item written dissent. The dissent has teeth: a tenant's District Court claim is limited to the items dissented from, and a tenant who neither signs nor dissents recovers nothing under the section (subsection (5)).
Separate account required	Yes
Interest owed to tenant	No
Account & interest rules	KRS 383.580 is silent on interest. It does require the deposit to sit in a dedicated account, and the tenant must be told both where that account is and its account number — a stricter disclosure than most states impose. Deposits must be held in an account 'used only for that purpose' at a bank or lending institution regulated by Kentucky or a federal agency, and prospective tenants must be told the location of the account AND the account number (KRS 383.580(1)). Tennessee's parallel statute requires location only.
Pet deposits	No statute addresses pet deposits anywhere in Kentucky; with no cap of any kind, they are purely a lease matter in URLTA and non-URLTA jurisdictions alike.
Non-refundable fees allowed	Not addressed by statute
Penalty for violation	Forfeiture only, and only where the URLTA has been locally adopted: the landlord loses the right to keep any part of the deposit. Kentucky has no damages multiplier, no bad-faith penalty, and no attorney-fee award for deposit violations. A landlord is not entitled to retain any portion of the deposit if it was not kept in the dedicated account required by (1) AND the initial and final damage listings required by (2)-(3) were not provided (KRS 383.580(4) — the statute's literal 'and' leaves ambiguous whether both failures are needed, the same drafting quirk as Tennessee's parallel provision; the statute is followed as written here). Outside URLTA jurisdictions there is no statutory penalty because there is no statutory duty.
Tenant forwarding-address duty	No affirmative duty — the landlord's refund notice runs to the 'last known or reasonably determinable address' — but the incentive is severe: a tenant who fails to respond within 60 days of the refund notice forfeits the entire refund to the landlord (KRS 383.580(7)).

Cite this page: "Landlord Atlas, Kentucky Security Deposit Laws (verified July 10, 2026), landlordatlas.com/laws/security-deposits/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.

Generate a Kentucky security-deposit return letter — free, no signup, built on the same verified Kentucky rules as this page.

Notes and caveats

Most of Kentucky has no deposit statute at all — KRS 383.500 (1984) makes the whole URLTA (KRS 383.505-383.705, which contains the deposit statute, KRS 383.580) adoptable only by ordinance of a city, county, or urban-county government — in its entirety and without amendment — and bars non-adopters from enacting their own ordinances on the same subjects. Most of Kentucky's 120 counties have NOT adopted, so most of the state has no deposit statute; the rule described here applies only where the URLTA has been adopted, and readers should confirm adoption with their local government.
'Applies statewide' claims are wrong — debunked from the primary text — consumer and AI sites in 2026 (e.g., leaselenses.com, kentuckylegalservicesauthority.com) flatly claim KRS 383.580 'applies statewide.' It does not: the section sits inside the adoptable span, was repealed and reenacted by the same 1984 act (ch. 176, sec. 16) that created the opt-in (sec. 1), and KRS 383.715 titles exactly that span as the URLTA — its 'All landlords of residential property' opening is intra-act phrasing, the same trap as T.C.A. 66-28-301. The likely seed of the myth: KRS 383.300, the domestic-violence lease-termination law, IS statewide because it is codified outside the URLTA span.
The '30/60-day return deadline' myth — those clocks run against the tenant — claims that deposits 'must be returned within 30/60 days' misread KRS 383.580(6)-(7): those are the unclaimed-deposit forfeiture windows and they run against the tenant. No return deadline exists.
Documented adopters — no official registry exists — the adopter list (non-exhaustive) was refreshed 2026-07-11 from a Legal Aid of the Bluegrass landlord-tenant training published June 2025 (via United Way of Greater Cincinnati, uwgc.org) — the freshest practitioner list found, superseding the ~2015-vintage Fort Knox Legal Assistance brief. Counties: Campbell, Fayette/Lexington, Jefferson/Louisville, Oldham, Pulaski. Cities: Barbourville, Bellevue, Bromley, Covington, Elsmere, Florence, Fort Thomas, Georgetown, Ludlow, Melbourne, Newport, Shelbyville, Silver Grove, Southgate, Taylor Mill, Walton, Woodlawn.
What changed between the two adopter lists — new versus the old list: Campbell County (county-wide — which itself covers Campbell County cities like Dayton, on the old list but absent from the new one), Elsmere, Fort Thomas, and Walton. Both lists agree on every other entry.
Why the deposit-cap and fee fields are blank — The deposit-cap and non-refundable-fee answers are empty because no provision exists for either — an empty answer here records an absence of law, not a zero.
Unchanged since 1984 — KRS 383.580 has not been amended since its 1984 enactment.

Common questions: Kentucky security deposits

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

How much can a landlord charge for a security deposit in Kentucky?: No statutory cap.
How long does a landlord have to return a security deposit in Kentucky?: No statutory deadline. Kentucky sets no deadline for returning a deposit, and in most of the state there is no deposit statute at all. Where the local government has adopted the URLTA, the only clocks in the statute run against the tenant, not the landlord.
What happens if a landlord does not return the deposit on time in Kentucky?: Forfeiture only, and only where the URLTA has been locally adopted: the landlord loses the right to keep any part of the deposit. Kentucky has no damages multiplier, no bad-faith penalty, and no attorney-fee award for deposit violations.
Do landlords have to pay interest on security deposits in Kentucky?: No — Kentucky does not require interest on the security deposit to be paid to the tenant. KRS 383.580 is silent on interest. It does require the deposit to sit in a dedicated account, and the tenant must be told both where that account is and its account number — a stricter disclosure than most states impose.
Can a landlord charge a non-refundable fee in Kentucky?: Not addressed by statute.

Statute citations

KRS 383.580 (1)-(7) (verified 2026) Official source
KRS 383.500 (local-option adoption of the URLTA, KRS 383.505-383.705) (verified 2026) Official source
KRS 383.580 (current-code mirror, current through 2025-01-01) (verified 2026) Unofficial mirror

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.