Kentucky Eviction Process: Notice Periods, Timeline, and Costs

In cities and counties that have adopted Kentucky's Uniform Residential Landlord and Tenant Act, KRS 383.660(2) lets the landlord terminate if rent stays unpaid for 7 days after written notice of the nonpayment and of the landlord's intention to terminate if it is not paid in that period. These are calendar days. Outside URLTA jurisdictions there is no statutory notice period for nonpayment during a lease term — the lease's own terms control, and if the lease is silent you are relying on common law, so a written demand with documented delivery is strongly advisable.

In URLTA jurisdictions KRS 383.660(1) requires a written notice specifying the acts constituting the breach and stating that the agreement terminates on a date not less than 14 days after receipt, with the tenancy ending as stated if the breach is not remedied in 15 days. Read the statute rather than a summary, because the 14-day and 15-day figures are both in the text. If substantially the same breach recurs within six months, the landlord may terminate on at least 14 days' written notice with no right to cure.

KRS 383.695(2) lets either party end a month-to-month tenancy with written notice at least 30 days before the periodic rental date specified in the notice, and week-to-week takes 7 days. In non-URLTA counties, KRS 383.195 requires the landlord to give one month's written notice to end a tenancy at will or by sufferance. Kentucky has no just-cause eviction requirement in either setting.

Forcible detainer actions are filed in the District Court of the county where the property is located. Kentucky has no uniform statewide filing fee — counties commonly charge in the range of $50 to $150 — plus sheriff service fees, so confirm the current amount with the District Court clerk before you file.

Kentucky forcible detainer cases move straight to a hearing rather than an answer deadline. Under KRS 383.210 and 383.215 the warrant must give the tenant at least 3 days' notice of the time and place of trial, and because that period is shorter than seven days it excludes intervening Saturdays, Sundays, and legal holidays.

Uncontested cases usually run about three to five weeks: a 7-day notice in URLTA areas, filing, a hearing at least 3 days after service, then a 7-day window for the tenant to appeal before the writ of possession issues and the sheriff schedules the set-out. A contested hearing, a jury demand, or an appeal to circuit court extends this considerably.

Lockouts, removing a tenant's belongings, and shutting off heat, running water, hot water, electricity, gas, or another essential service to force a tenant out are unlawful; only a sheriff acting on a court-issued writ may remove a tenant. Under KRS 383.655, in URLTA jurisdictions the tenant may recover possession or terminate the rental agreement and, either way, recover up to three months' periodic rent plus a reasonable attorney's fee, with prepaid rent returned if the agreement ends. In non-URLTA counties the tenant's claim sounds in common-law wrongful eviction and trespass for actual damages, which is not a safer position for the landlord.

House Bill 10 (2025), effective June 27, 2025, lets a property owner or authorized agent ask law enforcement to remove a person unlawfully occupying real property using a sworn petition, with immunity for officers and owners acting in good faith and a civil remedy for anyone wrongly removed. It targets squatters and does not apply to tenants, who must still be removed through a forcible detainer action. Earlier, House Bill 18 (2024), effective March 6, 2024 over the Governor's veto, created KRS 383.198, which bars local governments from adopting or enforcing landlord-tenant ordinances that conflict with state law and voided the Louisville and Lexington source-of-income ordinances requiring landlords to accept housing vouchers. Kentucky's forcible detainer procedure and all 41 URLTA sections were themselves unchanged in 2024, 2025, and 2026, and HB 202, which would have extended URLTA statewide, did not pass.

Kentucky's defining trap is that URLTA is a local option. Under KRS 383.500 the General Assembly authorized cities, counties, and urban-county governments to adopt the act in its entirety, and only adopting jurisdictions are covered — Louisville-Jefferson County, Lexington-Fayette County, Covington, Newport, Florence, Georgetown, Shelbyville, Oldham County, Pulaski County, and a set of smaller cities, among others. Everywhere else the lease and common law govern, and the 7-day and 14-day notice periods you find published simply do not apply. Confirm your specific city and county before you rely on any notice period, because the wrong one restarts the case. Kentucky is also strict about entity landlords: after Bobbett v. Russellville Mobile Park, LLC, courts have treated a non-lawyer filing a forcible detainer on behalf of an LLC as the unauthorized practice of law, so plan on hiring counsel if the property is not titled in your own name. One more thing to be careful about: Kentucky has no eviction record sealing or expungement. A 2026 bill, HB 338, would have created it and would have barred naming minors as forcible detainer defendants, and it passed the House unanimously before dying in the Senate — but several commercial landlord-law sites describe its provisions as though they were already law.

• KRS 383.660
• KRS 383.695
• KRS 383.500