Free Alabama Notice to Enter

This Alabama Notice to Enter gives a tenant clear written notice before the landlord enters the rental unit. Under Ala. Code §35-9A-303, except in an emergency the landlord must give at least two days’ notice of intent to enter and enter only at reasonable times – and Alabama lets that notice be posted on the primary entry door. See our tenant screening laws by state hub and how to screen tenants guide to keep your Alabama tenancies documented from the start.

Complete the fields below to generate an Alabama Notice to Enter. Ala. Code §35-9A-303 requires at least two days’ notice of intent to enter, at reasonable times, so plan the date accordingly and deliver the notice clearly – including by posting it on the primary entry door if you choose. The form records the date, time window, purpose, the persons entering, and how the notice is delivered.

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Alabama is a statutory-notice state. The Alabama Uniform Residential Landlord and Tenant Act, at Ala. Code § 35-9A-303, sets the rule statewide: except in case of emergency, the landlord shall give the tenant at least two days’ notice of the landlord’s intent to enter and may enter only at reasonable times. The statute uses the words two days, not a number of hours, so two days is the floor for any planned, non-emergency entry, and a landlord should count days rather than measuring a 48-hour clock to the minute.

The same section, § 35-9A-303, pairs the notice duty with a second command that is just as important: access may not be used to harass the tenant. So the statute does two things at once. It grants the landlord a right of access for legitimate purposes on proper notice, and it caps that right by forbidding its abuse. The notice rule and the no-harass rule work together: giving formally correct two days’ notice does not license an entry that is, in substance, harassment, and a landlord who enters repeatedly or at provocative times can violate the access duty even while technically announcing each visit.

Notice is excused only in narrow situations. In a genuine emergency – fire, flood, a gas leak, or another immediate threat to life or property – the landlord may enter at once without consent. Section 35-9A-303 also lets the landlord enter without consent under a court order and where the landlord reasonably believes the tenant has abandoned the unit. For every other entry, this form gives the tenant clear written notice of intent at a reasonable time and leaves you a dated record that satisfies Ala. Code § 35-9A-303 – whether you hand it over, mail it, or post it on the door. The sections that follow walk through the purposes that justify entry, the timing that keeps an entry reasonable, how the emergency exception and the advance-schedule option work, how showings and abandonment are handled, what the lease can and cannot do, and – most important for a landlord managing risk – exactly what remedy an Alabama tenant has when entry goes wrong, including the dedicated remedy in Ala. Code § 35-9A-442(b).

Section 35-9A-303(a) frames entry around legitimate landlord functions, and the statute supplies its own list of permitted purposes. A tenant shall not unreasonably withhold consent to the landlord entering to inspect the premises, make necessary or agreed repairs, decorations, alterations, or improvements, supply necessary or agreed services, or exhibit the unit to prospective or actual purchasers, mortgagees, tenants, workmen, or contractors. The unifying test that the no-harass clause implies is the same one running through the whole section: the landlord must have a real, property-management reason to be inside the unit, not a pretext for checking up on or pressuring the tenant.

Repairs and maintenance are the most common reason a landlord needs access. This includes responding to a tenant’s repair request, performing scheduled upkeep, and addressing conditions the landlord is obligated to fix under § 35-9A-204. The requested-versus-unrequested distinction matters here because of how consent works: when the tenant requests repairs, maintenance, or improvements, § 35-9A-303 deems the tenant to have consented to the entry, so the landlord can coordinate a time directly; when the landlord initiates the visit, the two days’ notice rule applies. Inspections – annual condition checks, move-out walkthroughs, and pre-renewal assessments – are equally routine, and a clear notice describing the inspection keeps it from feeling intrusive.

Showings are a frequent flashpoint. A landlord may need to show the unit to a prospective tenant near the end of a lease, to a prospective buyer if the property is on the market, or to a mortgagee, appraiser, or contractor during a refinance or a planned repair. The statute expressly lists these audiences, so each is a legitimate purpose – but each also brings strangers into the tenant’s home, so two days’ notice of intent and reasonable scheduling matter most here. Alabama also lets a landlord enter to exhibit the unit, with notice, during roughly the final stretch before the lease ends, which is when most showings cluster.

Building services and safety work round out the list: supplying necessary or agreed services, pest control treatment, servicing heating and cooling systems, and testing smoke and carbon-monoxide detectors. Safety-device testing in particular protects both sides, and most tenants welcome it when it is scheduled with notice. Across all of these purposes, the form lets the landlord state the exact reason, describe the work, and list everyone who will enter, which is the single most effective way to turn a potentially contested entry into a routine, documented visit.

It is worth being explicit about what is not a legitimate purpose, because that is where the no-harass clause of § 35-9A-303 bites. Entering to check whether the tenant is keeping the unit “well enough” without any maintenance reason, to look for lease violations on a hunch, to confront a tenant over a dispute, or simply to remind a tenant who is in control of the property are not property-management purposes; they are the kind of pretextual entries that look like harassment and that a court will treat as an abuse of access under § 35-9A-442(b). The discipline of writing down the purpose on a notice is itself a useful filter: if a landlord cannot articulate a concrete, legitimate reason for the visit on paper, that is a strong signal the entry should not happen at all.

Two phrases do the real work in Alabama: at least two days’ notice and reasonable times. A landlord who gives the full two days’ notice and enters at a reasonable time for a legitimate purpose is on solid ground; a landlord who shaves the notice or shows up at odd hours invites a dispute even when the underlying reason for entry was valid. The two-day rule is a floor, not a target – giving three or four days, or pairing a posted note with a phone call, costs nothing and removes the argument that the tenant did not really have notice.

On counting, treat “two days” as full days between delivery and entry, not a 48-hour stopwatch. If a notice is delivered or posted on a Monday, a Thursday entry is comfortably safe; a Wednesday-morning entry is the kind of close call that is easy to avoid by simply scheduling a day later. Where the notice is posted on the door rather than handed over, build in extra margin, because a posted note only works if it actually stays up and is seen – photograph the posted note with a timestamp so the date of posting is provable. The statute does not force the landlord to confirm the tenant read it, but a method the tenant plainly received is always easier to defend.

On hours, “reasonable times” generally means normal daytime hours. Entry early in the morning, late at night, or on weekends is harder to defend as reasonable unless the tenant has agreed to it or an emergency requires it. Matching the entry to the tenant’s schedule where practical, and offering a window rather than a single rigid minute, both reinforce that the landlord is acting reasonably and within the access right the statute grants.

Reasonableness also has a frequency dimension that the no-harass language makes explicit. A single, well-noticed entry to make a repair is plainly reasonable. A pattern of frequent entries, or repeated demands for entry, can cross the line into harassment and expose the landlord to the remedy in Ala. Code § 35-9A-442(b), because at some point the sheer volume of intrusions interferes with the tenant’s possession regardless of how politely each one is announced or how many days’ notice each carried. The safe practice is to consolidate work, enter no more often than the task genuinely requires, and document each visit.

Alabama gives landlords a practical tool that many states lack, and it deserves its own treatment because it is easy to over- or under-use. Section 35-9A-303 provides that if the landlord furnishes, separate from the lease, a general notice or an advance schedule longer than two days for repairs, maintenance, pest control, or service relating to health or safety, then no additional day-of notice is required for entries that fall within that schedule. In effect, a landlord who tells every tenant in writing that, say, pest control comes on the first Tuesday of each quarter has already satisfied the notice duty for those visits.

The boundaries matter. The schedule must be given separately from the lease and must exceed two days’ lead time, and it only covers the categories the statute names – repairs, maintenance, pest control, and health-or-safety service. It does not cover one-off entries outside the schedule, showings to buyers or new tenants, or anything that looks like a pretext, and it does not suspend the reasonable-time and no-harass limits. A landlord cannot, under the banner of an “advance schedule,” enter at unreasonable hours or convert recurring service into a license to drop in. Used properly, the option streamlines the routine, recurring entries that make up most of a landlord’s access while leaving the ordinary two days’ notice rule in place for everything else.

The clearest situation in which an Alabama landlord may enter without advance notice is a genuine emergency. Section 35-9A-303 expressly lets the landlord enter without consent in an emergency, and a fire, a flood, a gas leak, a burst pipe, or any other immediate threat to life, safety, or the property itself justifies immediate entry, because waiting to give two days’ notice could turn a containable problem into a catastrophe. The same provision allows entry without consent under a court order and where the landlord reasonably believes the tenant has abandoned the unit, but those are narrow and fact-specific.

It helps to draw a bright line between a true emergency and mere urgency. A burst pipe actively flooding the unit, a gas smell, a fire alarm, or a report of a medical crisis behind a locked door are emergencies that justify immediate entry, because every minute of delay risks serious harm to people or the building. A lease violation the landlord is eager to confront, a repair the tenant has been slow to schedule, or a desire to get ahead of a deadline are urgent to the landlord but are not emergencies, and using the emergency label to cover them is exactly the kind of overreach that the no-harass clause is meant to stop.

Because an emergency entry happens without the usual two days’ notice, documentation is the landlord’s protection. Record the date and time, the nature of the emergency, what was found on entering, what was done, and who entered, and keep any photographs. Notify the tenant promptly afterward, explaining what happened and why immediate entry was necessary. Scope matters too: an emergency justifies the entry needed to address the emergency, not a general search of the unit. A landlord who enters to stop a flood should deal with the water and leave, not take the opportunity to inspect the tenant’s belongings, because an emergency entry that balloons into a broader, unconnected search can lose its protection and revert to an ordinary unauthorized entry.

Showings deserve their own treatment because they put the landlord’s legitimate business needs in the sharpest tension with the tenant’s right to be left in peaceful possession. When a lease is ending, the landlord may reasonably need to show the unit to prospective tenants so it does not sit vacant. When the property is for sale, the landlord may need to show it to prospective purchasers, and a buyer’s mortgagee or appraiser may need access as well. Section 35-9A-303(a) lists exactly these audiences – purchasers, mortgagees, tenants, workmen, and contractors – so each is a legitimate purpose, but every one of them brings outsiders into an occupied home.

The protection for both sides is the full two days’ notice of intent at a reasonable time, applied with extra care because showings cluster and involve strangers. A well-drafted Alabama lease will often address how showings near the end of the term are handled, and a landlord should follow that clause while never falling below the statutory two days. Showings still require notice, and a flurry of poorly-noticed showings can itself become an abuse of access under § 35-9A-442(b) even where each individual notice technically gave two days, because the no-harass limit looks at the pattern, not just the paperwork on any one visit.

Practical courtesy goes a long way during a sale or re-rental. Group showings into defined windows rather than scattering them, give the tenant as much lead time as possible, and offer a way to reschedule around the tenant’s commitments. A tenant who feels respected during a marketing period is far less likely to refuse access or to claim harassment, and the landlord keeps the dated notices of intent that show every showing was properly announced and reasonably timed.

The two days’ notice rule assumes the tenant is still in possession. Section 35-9A-303 itself lets the landlord enter without consent where the landlord reasonably believes the tenant has abandoned the unit, because the possessory interest the notice rule protects begins to dissolve once the tenant has truly left. Abandonment, however, is a conclusion a landlord should reach carefully, because acting on a mistaken belief that a tenant has left can itself create liability – including under the lockout remedy in § 35-9A-407 if the “abandonment” turns out to be the landlord effectively excluding a still-present tenant.

Abandonment generally requires both that the tenant has actually left the premises and that the tenant intends not to return – shown by facts such as removed belongings, disconnected utilities, unpaid rent, and no response to contact. A tenant who is merely traveling, hospitalized, or temporarily away has not abandoned the unit, and treating an occupied home as abandoned can expose the landlord to a trespass claim and to the abuse-of-access remedy. Surrender is the cleaner case: the tenant affirmatively gives the unit back, by returning keys or by agreement, which ends the tenancy and the tenant’s possessory rights.

The safe approach is to confirm abandonment before relying on it. Document the indicators, attempt to reach the tenant, and, when the situation is genuinely ambiguous, use the legal process rather than self-help. Alabama is strict about self-help: a landlord may not lock out a tenant or cut off utilities, and doing so triggers § 35-9A-407 with its three-months’-rent-or-actual-damages floor and attorney’s fees; the lawful route to recover possession is the unlawful-detainer process under Ala. Code § 6-6-310 and following. Until the landlord is confident the tenant has surrendered or abandoned possession, the ordinary entry rules – two days’ notice at reasonable times, with the emergency exception – continue to apply.

Even though Alabama fixes the entry duty by statute, the lease still shapes the day-to-day mechanics of access, and a tenant’s real-time consent still matters. The lease can spell out how showings, inspections, and maintenance visits are coordinated, can set notice practices more generous than two days, and can establish the delivery channel the parties will use. What the lease cannot do is contract below the statutory floor: a clause purporting to allow routine entry on less than two days’ notice without consent, or to let the landlord enter at unreasonable times, does not override Ala. Code § 35-9A-303.

A tenant’s consent also matters in real time, and Alabama builds two consent rules right into the statute. First, the tenant may consent to entry on less than two days’ notice, so an agreed-upon visit on short notice is fine when the tenant actually agrees. Second, a tenant who requests repairs, maintenance, or improvements is deemed to have consented to the entry to perform that work, needing no advance notice at all. The cleanest practice is to memorialize consent – a text or email confirming the date, time, and purpose – so that an agreed-upon or tenant-requested visit cannot later be recast as an intrusion.

The deemed-consent rule has a scope limit that is worth naming, because it is where a tenant-requested repair can turn back into an over-entry. The consent the statute implies attaches to the work the tenant asked for, not to an open-ended license to roam the unit. A tenant who reports a leaking faucet has consented to entry to fix the faucet; that consent does not authorize the landlord to use the visit to inspect other rooms, photograph the tenant’s belongings, or look for unrelated lease violations. If the landlord discovers a separate problem during a requested repair and wants to return to address it, the safe course is to treat that follow-up as a fresh, landlord-initiated entry and give the ordinary two days’ notice rather than stretching the original request to cover it. Keeping the entry within the scope of what the tenant asked for is what keeps deemed consent from collapsing into the kind of pretextual entry that § 35-9A-442(b) is meant to remedy.

There is a limit, however, that landlords should not lose sight of, and in Alabama it is statutory rather than merely prudential. The no-harass command of § 35-9A-303 means a landlord cannot use even a broadly worded lease as a shield for harassment. A landlord who relies on a permissive clause to enter repeatedly, at unreasonable hours, or to pressure a tenant is not merely exercising a contract right; that conduct can trigger the remedy in Ala. Code § 35-9A-442(b) – an injunction or termination plus actual damages – regardless of what the clause says. A permissive clause expands the landlord’s ordinary access; it does not license abuse.

For that reason, the smarter drafting choice is usually a clause that is clear rather than maximal. A clause that tracks the statute – two days’ notice of intent at reasonable times, an emergency carve-out, an advance schedule for recurring service, and a stated delivery method including door-posting – gives the landlord everything a normal operation needs while signaling good faith to a court. An “any time, no notice” clause buys very little real-world freedom, because the statutory duty and the no-harass limit cap it anyway, and it reads badly if the tenancy ever turns adversarial. A balanced clause is both more enforceable in spirit and more persuasive evidence that the landlord respected the tenant’s possession.

This is the heart of Alabama entry law and the part most often gotten wrong, because the remedy is not in the entry section. Section 35-9A-303 states the duty; the dedicated remedy for abusing that duty lives in the Act’s remedies article, at Ala. Code § 35-9A-442(b). Section 35-9A-442 is symmetrical – subsection (a) is the landlord’s remedy when the tenant unreasonably refuses lawful access, and subsection (b) is the tenant’s remedy for the landlord’s abuse of access. The remedies below are presented roughly in the order an Alabama tenant in possession would consider them, starting with the statute written for exactly this problem.

Ala. Code § 35-9A-442(b) – the dedicated entry remedy

This is the primary and purpose-built remedy. Section 35-9A-442(b) provides that if the landlord makes an unlawful entry, or a lawful entry in an unreasonable manner, or makes repeated demands for entry that are otherwise lawful but have the effect of unreasonably harassing the tenant, the tenant may obtain injunctive relief to prevent the recurrence of the conduct or may terminate the rental agreement. In either case, the tenant may recover actual damages. The section thus reaches all three failure modes – the entry with no right, the entry made the wrong way, and the campaign of harassing demands – and it gives the tenant a real choice between stopping the conduct and exiting the lease.

Ala. Code § 35-9A-401 – termination for material noncompliance

Where the landlord’s entry conduct amounts to a material breach of the rental agreement or of the landlord’s statutory duties, the general tenant remedy in Ala. Code § 35-9A-401 also applies, and the termination route in § 35-9A-442(b) runs through it. Section 35-9A-401 lets a tenant deliver a written notice specifying the breach, terminate if it is not cured within the statutory period, and recover actual damages and reasonable attorney fees, with injunctive relief available as well. In an entry dispute, § 35-9A-401 typically operates alongside the dedicated remedy in § 35-9A-442(b): the entry-specific subsection is the natural home for an over-entry claim, while the general noncompliance section captures conduct that breaches the broader bargain and is the section that supplies attorney fees.

Injunctive relief to stop a pattern

When the problem is not a single past entry but a pattern of continuing or threatened unlawful entries, the tenant’s strongest tool is an injunction – and Alabama supplies it expressly. Section 35-9A-442(b) names injunctive relief “to prevent the recurrence of the conduct” as a remedy in its own right, and § 35-9A-401 supports an injunction as part of the general noncompliance remedy. An injunction does not undo past entries, but it can put a stop to a landlord who keeps coming back or who keeps demanding entry to harass, which is often what a tenant facing an abusive access pattern most needs.

Constructive eviction and quiet enjoyment – one unified theory in Alabama

If a landlord’s entry conduct goes so far that it renders the premises untenantable, the tenant may treat it as a constructive eviction. The critical condition is that the tenant must actually vacate the premises within a reasonable time to claim it; a tenant who stays put cannot rely on the doctrine, as the Court of Civil Appeals confirmed in S. Security Servs., Inc. v. Esneault, 435 So. 2d 1309 (Ala. Civ. App. 1983). Alabama has a distinctive wrinkle here that a tenant must not miss: in Bowdoin Square, L.L.C. v. Winn-Dixie Montgomery, Inc., 873 So. 2d 1091 (Ala. 2003), the Supreme Court of Alabama treated constructive eviction and breach of the covenant of quiet enjoyment as a single, unified theory rather than two separate claims. A tenant should therefore not plead “constructive eviction” and “breach of quiet enjoyment” as independent counts the way some states allow – in Alabama they are one cause of action, and it requires the tenant to leave the home.

Common-law trespass

A landlord who enters a unit the tenant lawfully possesses, without a right of access and without legal process, can also be liable to the tenant in common-law trespass. Possession, not title, founds a trespass action, which is exactly why a tenant in possession can sue a landlord who holds title but has entered unlawfully. Trespass is a doctrinal backstop that runs alongside the statutory remedy; in most Alabama entry disputes the § 35-9A-442(b) claim does the heavy lifting, with trespass available as an additional common-law theory for an entry made with no right at all.

Retaliation is a separate protection that can also touch entry. Ala. Code § 35-9A-501 prohibits a landlord from retaliating against a tenant – by discriminatorily raising rent, cutting services, or bringing or threatening an eviction – after the tenant complains to a building- or housing-code agency, complains to the landlord about a § 35-9A-204 maintenance duty, or joins a tenants’ union. A tenant subjected to retaliation gets the § 35-9A-407 remedy and a defense to a retaliatory possession action. If a landlord weaponizes entry to retaliate after such an action, the retaliation statute can apply on top of the entry remedy. The smart reading keeps each statute in its own lane: § 35-9A-303 for the access duty, § 35-9A-442(b) for the abuse-of-access remedy, § 35-9A-401 for material noncompliance, § 35-9A-407 for lockouts and utility shutoffs, and § 35-9A-501 for retaliation.

Alabama entry law sits inside the Alabama Uniform Residential Landlord and Tenant Act, but the duty to give notice and the tenant’s remedy for an abusive entry live in different parts of the Act – a distinction that trips up template after template. The access duty is in Ala. Code § 35-9A-303, in the tenant-obligations article; the remedy for abuse of that access is in the remedies article, at Ala. Code § 35-9A-442(b). The table below collects the authorities that actually govern entry in Alabama and the consequences of getting it wrong, so a landlord can see at a glance where each rule comes from and avoid the common error of citing the wrong section for the wrong purpose.

Read together, these authorities tell a coherent story that is easy to get wrong if you grab the first plausible-looking section. Alabama did legislate landlord entry, so the duty is statutory and concrete – at least two days’ notice, reasonable times, and the door-posting route, all in Ala. Code § 35-9A-303. But the consequence for breaking that duty is not housed in the same section. It lives in Ala. Code § 35-9A-442(b), a remedy that gives the tenant an injunction or termination plus actual damages. A landlord who reads only § 35-9A-303 sees the obligation but misses the teeth; a tenant who reads only § 35-9A-303 may not realize a dedicated remedy exists in the Act’s remedies article.

A word on how to use this reference responsibly, because the entry area is unusually full of citation traps. The general over-entry remedy is § 35-9A-442(b) – not § 35-9A-407, which is the lockout-and-utility-shutoff section with its much larger three-months’-rent-or-actual-damages floor and attorney’s fees, and not § 35-9A-303, which is only the duty. The general tenant remedy for a landlord’s material breach is § 35-9A-401, and the retaliation bar is § 35-9A-501. On the common-law side, Alabama is distinctive: it does not treat constructive eviction and breach of quiet enjoyment as separate claims, so a tenant cannot stack them as independent counts the way some states allow – Bowdoin Square collapses them into one theory, and Esneault requires the tenant to actually move out to use it. The right move for an Alabama over-entry is § 35-9A-442(b), supported where appropriate by § 35-9A-401 and ordinary trespass, with the unified constructive-eviction theory reserved for the rare case where the tenant has truly been driven from the home. Any template that fills these gaps with the wrong section is not making the page stronger; it is making it wrong.

None of this is a substitute for advice on a specific situation. The authorities here describe the general shape of Alabama entry law, but the outcome of any actual dispute turns on the exact lease language, the facts of the entries, and how a particular court reads them. The official Code of Alabama is the best free starting point for both sides, and a qualified Alabama landlord-tenant attorney is the right resource when a real conflict is on the table. Used alongside disciplined, well-documented notice, this form gives an Alabama landlord a clean, defensible record for every entry – which is the most reliable protection the law actually allows.

An Alabama Notice to Enter is the written notice a landlord or property manager gives a tenant before entering the rental unit. Alabama has codified the rule statewide: under Ala. Code §35-9A-303 of the Alabama Uniform Residential Landlord and Tenant Act, except in an emergency the landlord must give at least two days’ notice of intent to enter and may enter only at reasonable times. Giving clear, dated notice is therefore both a legal requirement and the best protection against a dispute.

Because the statute controls, the standard is the same across Alabama, with no separate city or county entry codes layered on top: two days’ notice for any planned, non-emergency entry, counted in days rather than as a stopwatch. The statute also builds in real flexibility – a tenant may consent to shorter notice, a tenant who requests repairs is deemed to consent, and a landlord can set up an advance schedule for recurring service – and the sections below work through exactly how each of those pieces fits, so this overview stays short and leaves the detailed mechanics to the body.

Two things make Alabama distinctive, and both are developed in full further down rather than recapped here. The first is the delivery method: §35-9A-303 lets the landlord give the required notice by posting a note on the tenant’s primary entry door stating the intended time and purpose – a route many states do not authorize. The form’s delivery options include door-posting for exactly that reason. The second is where the remedy lives: the entry duty is in §35-9A-303, but the tenant’s remedy for an abusive entry sits in a different part of the Act, at §35-9A-442(b), and that section is easy to confuse with the harsher lockout remedy in §35-9A-407.

The risk an Alabama landlord is managing is a statutory one. Entry without the required two days’ notice, at unreasonable times, or to harass the tenant violates §35-9A-303 and gives the tenant the §35-9A-442(b) remedy of an injunction or termination plus actual damages; in turn, a tenant who unreasonably withholds consent to a properly noticed entry can be liable to the landlord under the mirror remedy. A dated, signed notice for every routine entry – posted, delivered, or mailed – is the simple, durable record that shows you complied, and producing that record is exactly what this form is built to do. Pair a consistent entry practice with disciplined tenant screening and a documented screening process so your Alabama tenancies are well-run from application through move-out.

• Give at least two days’ notice of intent to enter (Ala. Code §35-9A-303).
• Enter only at reasonable times for a legitimate purpose.
• Notice may be posted on the tenant’s primary entry door stating the time and purpose.
• The tenant shall not unreasonably withhold consent, and may consent to less than two days’ notice.
• A genuine emergency allows immediate entry without notice or consent.

• Personal delivery to the tenant.
• Posting a written note on the primary entry door – expressly allowed by Ala. Code §35-9A-303.
• Email or text where the lease permits electronic notice.
• Certified mail for a documented record when timing allows the full two days.

• Giving less than the two days’ notice Ala. Code §35-9A-303 requires for a routine entry.
• Counting hours instead of days, then entering too soon after delivery or posting.
• Entering at unreasonable times or repeatedly, in violation of the statute.
• Posting a door note that omits the intended time or purpose, so it does not satisfy the statute.
• Keeping no dated copy, leaving no record that the two days’ notice was given.

• Count at least two full days from delivery or posting to entry, and add a buffer when you can.
• If you post on the door, state the intended time and purpose clearly and photograph the posted note.
• State the exact purpose, time window, and persons entering.
• Keep every signed notice on file for the life of the tenancy.

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