Landlord Atlas

What late fees can a landlord charge in Kansas?

Verified July 11, 2026 All Kansas topics →

Kansas sets no cap on residential late fees and mandates no grace period — the Residential Landlord and Tenant Act never mentions late fees, and rent is payable without demand or notice at the time the lease fixes (K.S.A. 58-2545(c)), so a lease-based fee can start accruing the day after rent is due.

The three days many websites call Kansas's 'statutory grace period' is actually the eviction cure window in K.S.A. 58-2564(b): a landlord terminating for nonpayment must give a 3-day pay-or-quit notice (three consecutive 24-hour periods, plus two extra days if mailed), but nothing in that section delays or limits a late fee. With no cap, the only brakes are contract law: courts can refuse to enforce an unconscionable fee (K.S.A. 58-2544) and Kansas treats an unreasonably large fixed charge as a void penalty under liquidated-damages doctrine. Beware the headline case: in 2025 the Kansas Supreme Court reinstated $21,240 in $20-per-day late fees (Schutt v. Foster), but only because the tenant's lawyers failed to properly raise unconscionability — the court never ruled the fee fair. One practical statute cuts the other way: a landlord who accepts late rent without reservation waives the right to terminate over that late payment (K.S.A. 58-2566).

Kansas 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 statute addresses fee structure; daily late fees are a lease matter bounded only by unconscionability (K.S.A. 58-2544) and common-law liquidated-damages reasonableness. In Schutt v. Foster, No. 126,555 (Kan. July 25, 2025), a $20-per-day lease fee that accrued to $21,240 was reinstated by the Kansas Supreme Court — but solely because the tenant failed to preserve her unconscionability argument, not because the court approved the amount.
Reasonableness standard No statutory cap or reasonableness formula exists in the Residential Landlord and Tenant Act (negative check run against all 34 sections). Enforceability is governed by K.S.A. 58-2544 unconscionability and Kansas liquidated-damages doctrine: an amount is enforceable only if reasonable in light of the anticipated or actual harm, the difficulty of proving loss, and the infeasibility of other remedies; an unreasonably large fixed sum is void as a penalty (Carrothers Constr. Co. v. City of South Hutchinson, 288 Kan. 743 (2009)). No Kansas appellate decision has set a percentage cap for residential late fees.

Notes and caveats

statutory_cap and grace_period_days are both null — verified negative against the full act (all 34 sections downloaded and searched, both reads; the only 'late charge' occurrence in the chapter is a case annotation). must_be_in_lease is null rather than true: no Kansas statute conditions late fees on a written lease; the agreed-fee requirement is ordinary contract law, and rent is defined as 'all payments to be made to the landlord under the rental agreement, other than the security deposit' (58-2543(j)), which pulls agreed late charges into the rent framework. Traps to debunk on page copy: (1) the 58-2564(b) 3-day cure window recast as a 'grace period' — it only delays termination, is computed as three consecutive 24-hour periods, and adds two days when the notice is mailed; (2) Schutt v. Foster spun as 'Kansas Supreme Court approves $21,000 late fees' — the July 25, 2025 decision (No. 126,555) reversed the Court of Appeals (which had cut the fees to $1,700 as unconscionable) purely on preservation grounds; unconscionability remains an open, viable defense when properly raised; (3) '5-10% presumptively reasonable' figures on landlord sites have no Kansas statutory or appellate basis. Related doctrine: Heckard v. Martin, 25 Kan. App. 2d 162 (1998) — late charges must be specifically pleaded to be awarded; Chelsea Plaza Homes v. Moore, 226 Kan. 430 (1979) — the specific RLTA takes precedence over the broader Kansas Consumer Protection Act, limiting KCPA attacks on lease fees; 58-2547(a)(3) voids lease clauses shifting attorney fees (often conflated with late-fee clauses). Dead bill debunk: HB 2666 (2025-26, Rep. Rui Xu) would have imposed 'restrictions on fees for the late payment of rent' plus tenant disclosures — it died in the House Commerce, Labor and Economic Development committee at sine die adjournment 2026-04-11 without a vote; any source citing it as live Kansas law is wrong.

Common questions: Kansas 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 Kansas?
No statutory cap (see reasonableness standard and notes). No statutory cap or reasonableness formula exists in the Residential Landlord and Tenant Act (negative check run against all 34 sections). Enforceability is governed by K.S.A. 58-2544 unconscionability and Kansas liquidated-damages doctrine: an amount is enforceable only if reasonable in light of the anticipated or actual harm, the difficulty of proving loss, and the infeasibility of other remedies; an unreasonably large fixed sum is void as a penalty (Carrothers Constr. Co. v. City of South Hutchinson, 288 Kan. 743 (2009)). No Kansas appellate decision has set a percentage cap for residential late fees.
Is there a grace period before rent is late in Kansas?
None mandated statewide.
Does a late fee have to be written into the lease in Kansas?
Not addressed by statute.
Can a landlord charge a daily late fee in Kansas?
No statute addresses fee structure; daily late fees are a lease matter bounded only by unconscionability (K.S.A. 58-2544) and common-law liquidated-damages reasonableness. In Schutt v. Foster, No. 126,555 (Kan. July 25, 2025), a $20-per-day lease fee that accrued to $21,240 was reinstated by the Kansas Supreme Court — but solely because the tenant failed to preserve her unconscionability argument, not because the court approved the amount.

Statute citations

How this record was verified: Direct read of statute text on the official Kansas Office of Revisor of Statutes site (ksrevisor.gov), each load-bearing section fetched twice by independent methods (WebFetch page read plus raw curl of the same official page, all figures reconciled verbatim): 58-2550 (1-month/1.5-month/half-month pet caps, 14-day and 30-day return clocks, 1.5x penalty), 58-2548 (5-day joint inventory), 58-2557 (reasonable notice/reasonable hours entry), 58-2570 (7-day/30-day/15-day termination notices), 58-2565(b) (30-day absence entry, 10-day abandonment presumption), 58-2564(b) (3-day nonpayment cure), 58-2563 (1.5 months' rent ouster remedy), and 12-16,120 (express local rent-control preemption). Negative checks run against the full Residential Landlord and Tenant Act: all 34 sections (58-2540 through 58-2573) downloaded and searched — no late-fee, grace-period, deposit-interest, escrow/separate-account, or rent-increase-notice provision exists. Pending-bill check 2026-07-11 on kslegislature.gov: 2025-26 biennium adjourned sine die 2026-04-11; HB 2666 (late-fee restrictions), SB 482 (condemned-unit deposit return), and HB 2768 (split rent payments) all died in committee; enacted Sub HB 2357 (eviction expungement) and SB 391 (voucher-mandate preemption) do not affect these four topics. Sight-confirmed 2026-07-12 on each bill's official JS-rendered history pane (browser read of kslegislature.org/li/b2025_26/measures/): all three show 'Died in Committee' 2026-04-10 as the final entry — carry-forward closed.