Tennessee Late Fee Laws: The Landlord and Tenant Guide

Tennessee is one of the few states where the answer to “how much can a landlord charge as a late fee?” depends on which county the rental sits in. In the larger counties covered by the Uniform Residential Landlord and Tenant Act, a residential late fee is capped at 10% of the past-due rent and cannot be charged until a five-day grace period has run. In the smaller counties the Act does not reach, there is no statutory cap at all, and a late fee is enforceable only if the agreement provides for one and the amount is reasonable rather than a penalty. That population split — drawn at more than seventy-five thousand people under the 2010 federal census — is the fact that drives this entire page, and getting the county wrong is the most common Tennessee late-fee mistake.

This guide walks the full framework in plain English: the 10% cap and the five-day grace period under Tennessee Code section 66-28-201, exactly when a fee may first be charged and the Sunday-or-holiday extension, why a fee has to come from the agreement rather than from the statute, and the one thing Tennessee Code section 66-28-201 genuinely does require in writing, the separate bad-check rule under Tennessee Code sections 47-29-101 and 47-29-102, and the critical point that a late fee is not the rent a tenant must pay to cure a fourteen-day nonpayment notice. It also covers special cases such as subsidized housing, the role of local rules, how a tenant contests an unlawful fee, a practical playbook for both sides, real scenarios, and a Tennessee-specific FAQ.

Because Tennessee’s rules turn on a county-population line, the safest posture for a landlord is to confirm which side of the split the property falls on before charging anything, and the strongest position for a tenant is to know that in a covered county a fee above 10% of the past-due rent, or one charged inside the grace period, is unlawful no matter what the lease says. Treat every figure here as a starting point and verify the current statute before you charge, pay, or dispute a fee.

Before diving into numbers, it helps to see exactly what Tennessee law does and does not control. A late fee is not rent. It is a contractual charge the landlord seeks to add when rent arrives late, and Tennessee treats it as a term of the rental agreement that, in covered counties, is bounded by a specific statute. That is what makes Tennessee different from a pure reasonableness state: for most of the state’s renters, who live in the populous counties, there is a hard number in the code — 10% of the past-due rent — and a hard timing rule — a five-day grace period.

So the narrow legal question in Tennessee is really two questions asked in order. First: is this rental in a URLTA county or not? That single fact decides whether the 10% cap and the five-day grace period apply at all. Second, once the county is settled: does this fee fit within the applicable rule — the statutory cap and grace period in a covered county, or the lease-plus-reasonableness standard in a county the Act does not reach? Everything else on this page — the agreement requirement, the bad-check rule, the nonpayment interplay — sits on top of that two-step framing.

This structure is unusual. Many states pick one rule for the whole state; Tennessee draws a line through its map and applies a firmer, capped regime on one side and a looser, reasonableness regime on the other. That is why a landlord who owns property in both a big county and a small one cannot use a single late-fee clause blindly, and why the very first thing a tenant should establish is which regime governs their unit.

In a URLTA county, the answer is a clear yes. Tennessee Code section 66-28-201 requires a five-day grace period before any late fee may be charged. The period is measured from the day the rent is due, and the statute directs that the due date itself is counted as the first of the five days. In practical terms, if rent is due on the first, the landlord may not impose a late fee until the rent is still unpaid after the fifth — the grace period has to run out before a fee can attach.

The statute adds a protective wrinkle for weekends and holidays. If the last day of the five-day grace period falls on a Sunday or a legal holiday as defined in Tennessee’s general holiday statute, the landlord may not charge a late fee as long as the tenant pays the rent on the next business day. So a tenant whose grace period ends on a Sunday effectively gets until Monday to pay without a fee. This extension is a small but real piece of tenant protection built into the statute.

Non-URLTA Counties

In the smaller counties the Uniform Residential Landlord and Tenant Act does not cover, there is no statutory grace period at all. Rent is due on the date the lease specifies, and any cushion the tenant enjoys comes only from the written lease. A landlord in a non-URLTA county who writes a five-day cushion into the lease has created a grace period by contract, but the state did not require it, and a lease that is silent on the point gives the tenant none. Tenants in these counties should read the lease closely rather than assume the five-day statutory rule reaches them, because it does not.

This is the heart of Tennessee late-fee law, and it has two moving parts that must be read together. The first is the cap itself. Under Tennessee Code section 66-28-201, in a covered county a charge or fee for the late payment of rent, however it is described, may not exceed 10% of the amount of rent past due. The “however it is described” language matters: a landlord cannot escape the cap by relabeling the charge as an administrative fee, a processing fee, or additional rent. If it functions as a penalty for paying late, it counts against the 10% ceiling. And the cap is measured against the past-due rent, so if only part of the rent is late, the 10% is figured on that unpaid portion, not on the full monthly rent.

The second part is the reach of the rule. The cap lives inside the Uniform Residential Landlord and Tenant Act, and Tennessee Code section 66-28-102 defines exactly where that Act applies: only in counties having a population of more than seventy-five thousand according to the 2010 federal census or any subsequent federal census. That population figure is a fixed statutory benchmark, not a number that shifts with every local estimate. The larger, more urban counties — the ones containing cities such as Nashville, Memphis, Knoxville, and Chattanooga — sit above the line, so the 10% cap and the five-day grace period bind there. The smaller, more rural counties fall below the line, the Act does not apply, and there is no statutory cap.

What Happens in a Non-URLTA County

In a county the Act does not reach, Tennessee does not hand landlords a blank check, but it does remove the statutory ceiling. There, a late fee is enforceable if two ordinary contract principles are met: it is provided for in the tenancy agreement, and the amount is a reasonable estimate of the landlord’s actual loss from late payment rather than a punitive penalty. A grossly excessive fee in a non-URLTA county can still be challenged as an unenforceable penalty under general contract law, but there is no bright-line 10% number to point to. This is why the same lease clause can be perfectly lawful in one Tennessee county and capped down in another.

A late fee cannot appear out of thin air anywhere in Tennessee. To be enforceable at all, the fee must be provided for in the tenancy agreement. The lease has to say a late fee applies, when it applies, and how much it is. A landlord cannot add a late fee the lease never mentions, cannot spring one on the tenant mid-tenancy without a proper new agreement, and cannot charge more than the lease provides. If the agreement is silent on late fees, there is no late fee to collect, and neither the statutory cap analysis nor the reasonableness analysis ever begins, because there is no contractual fee to test.

Nothing in Tennessee Code section 66-28-201 requires that agreement to be written in order for a late fee to be charged. Subsection (d) sets the 10% cap and the five-day grace period without reference to the form of the agreement, and subsection (b) provides that “in absence of a lease agreement, the tenant shall pay the reasonable value for the use and occupancy of the dwelling unit.” In practice a written clause is still much the stronger position for a landlord, because with nothing in writing the landlord carries the burden of proving what was agreed — but that is an evidential point, not a statutory bar.

Assuming the lease does provide for a fee, the timing depends on the county. In a URLTA county, the fee may not attach until the five-day grace period under Tennessee Code section 66-28-201 has run, and even then it may not exceed 10% of the past-due rent. Writing a bigger number or an earlier trigger into the lease does not help the landlord: the statute overrides a lease term that conflicts with it, so a lease clause authorizing a 15% fee or a fee on the second day is unenforceable to the extent it exceeds the statutory limits. In a non-URLTA county, the fee may attach once the rent is actually late under the lease, subject only to the requirement that the amount be reasonable.

Thirty dollars is the only bad-check sum a Tennessee landlord may add to what a tenant owes. Under Tennessee Code section 47-29-102, when a check is not paid by the drawee because the maker or drawer had no account or insufficient funds on deposit with the financial institution, or because the check carries an incorrect or insufficient signature, the payee of that check — a landlord holding a bounced rent check included — is authorized to assess a handling charge against the maker or drawer “in an amount not to exceed thirty dollars ($30.00).” Section 47-29-102 is a general payee provision. It carries no merchant limit, no notice requirement, no written-demand step, no lease condition and no court involvement, and it applies whether or not the rental sits in a URLTA county. The thirty dollars is a flat statutory ceiling, not a pass-through of whatever the bank actually charged.

Everything else in Tennessee’s bad-check law is a court remedy, not a fee. Tennessee Code section 47-29-101(a) reaches only a person who executed and delivered a check with fraudulent intent — which may be inferred as provided by Tennessee Code section 39-14-121 — and who then stopped payment on it or allowed it to be dishonored. Even then, that person is liable only if found liable to the holder on the check or draft in a civil action. All five items in the subsection hang off that one condition: (1) the face amount of the dishonored check; (2) interest at 10% per year on the face amount or the remaining unpaid balance, running from the date the check was executed until payment is made in full; (3) any reasonable service charges the payee incurred in attempting to obtain payment from the bank or other financial institution; (4) court costs incurred in bringing the civil action; and (5) reasonable attorney fees incurred by the holder.

The practical consequence shows up on the rent ledger. Dishonor by itself reaches only the section 47-29-102 handling charge. The 10% interest, the bank service charges, the court costs and the attorney fees are line items of a judgment a court enters against a drawer found to have acted with fraudulent intent. They are not amounts a landlord may bill or post to a rent account. A landlord who adds 10% interest to a tenant’s balance on the strength of a bounced check is charging something no Tennessee statute authorizes.

Section 47-29-101 also carries a treble remedy, and it is gated at four separate points. Under section 47-29-101(d), the holder must send written notice by certified mail, and that notice must state both that the check has not been paid and that treble damages will be sought. A demand that omits the treble-damages warning, or that goes out by ordinary post, does not start the clock. The drawer must then fail to pay the full amount within thirty days following that certified mailing, and there must be a