Car accident statute of limitations in Montana

If you were hurt in a Montana car accident, you have three years from the date of the crash to file a personal injury lawsuit. Miss that date and, with rare exceptions, a Montana court will throw the case out no matter how strong the evidence is. That three-year clock comes from Mont. Code Ann. 27-2-204, which sets the general limitations period for tort claims not founded on a written contract.¹

That single number doesn't cover everything, though. Property damage to your vehicle runs on its own, shorter two-year clock. Wrongful death claims sit at three years too, unless the death resulted from a homicide, which stretches the window to ten years. And a few Montana-specific wrinkles, minors, government vehicles, and how insurance claims interact with a lawsuit deadline, can move the real deadline earlier or later than most people assume.

The three-year rule for injury claims

Montana's general tort statute of limitations covers "an action upon a liability not founded upon an instrument in writing," which includes car accident negligence claims. Mont. Code Ann. 27-2-204(1) sets that period at three years, running from the date of the collision.¹ That's the number to write down and track if you were injured as a driver, passenger, cyclist, or pedestrian in a Montana crash.

Wrongful death claims brought by a surviving family member follow the same three-year period under the same statute.¹ If the crash victim's death resulted from a homicide, for example a driver later charged with vehicular homicide by intoxication, the deadline extends to ten years.¹ That distinction matters because the criminal case and the civil case run on separate tracks, and families sometimes assume a pending criminal prosecution controls the civil deadline. It doesn't.

Vehicle damage runs on its own two-year clock

Property damage, meaning your car, not your body, gets a shorter window. Mont. Code Ann. 27-2-207 gives you two years to sue over "injury to or waste or trespass on real or personal property" and for "taking, detaining, or injuring any goods or chattels."² A single crash produces both an injury claim and a property claim, and Montana runs them on two different limitations periods side by side.

This is one of the more overlooked details in a Montana crash case. Someone who focuses entirely on medical treatment and lets the vehicle-damage dispute drift can find that two years have passed before they've resolved a fight with an insurer over repair costs or a diminished value claim. The two-year property clock, not the three-year injury clock, is the one to watch if an insurer is slow-walking a vehicle damage settlement.

What starts and stops the clock

Montana's statute measures three years from the date of the crash, and for most collisions that's a literal reading: the day of impact is the day the clock starts.¹ There's no broad discovery-rule carve-out written into 27-2-204 for ordinary vehicle collisions the way there sometimes is for claims involving hidden defects or delayed diagnoses, so don't count on a "when I found out" argument to buy extra time in a standard crash case.

A few circumstances do pause, or toll, that clock:

• Minors. Under Mont. Code Ann. 27-2-401, if the injured person is a minor when the crash happens, the time of that disability doesn't count against the limitations period. In practice, that generally lets a child's claim wait past the ordinary three years. But the statute also caps how much extra time the disability itself can add: no more than five years beyond the ordinary period.³ That interaction, minority tolling stacked against a five-year outer cap, is easy to get wrong without reading the statute closely, and it's exactly the kind of question worth taking to an attorney rather than guessing at.
• Crashes involving a government vehicle or entity. If the at-fault driver was a state, county, or city employee acting within the job, Montana requires you to present a written claim to that government first, before you can sue. Claims against the state go to the Department of Administration, which then has 120 days to accept or deny the claim before a lawsuit can be filed in district court.⁴ The state's Risk Management and Tort Defense Division handles that intake.⁵ Political subdivisions, cities and counties, have their own presentment procedures under the same chapter of law.⁴ None of this erases the underlying three-year deadline, but it adds a procedural step that eats into your timeline if you wait until year two or three to start it.

Why the deadline matters well before it arrives

Three years sounds generous until you account for how a claim actually gets built. Montana follows a modified comparative negligence rule: under Mont. Code Ann. 27-1-702, you can still recover damages as long as your share of fault isn't greater than the other driver's, but your recovery gets reduced by your own percentage of fault, and it disappears once your fault exceeds the other side's.⁶ Insurance adjusters know this, and they use the passage of time against a claimant. Memories fade, witnesses move, dashcam footage gets overwritten, and a damaged vehicle gets repaired or scrapped before anyone independent can inspect it. None of that requires missing the legal deadline to hurt a case; waiting is often enough on its own.

Montana also requires every auto insurer to offer uninsured and underinsured motorist (UM/UIM) coverage matching the policy's liability limits, and that coverage stays on the policy unless the named insured rejects it in writing, a rejection that then carries forward to renewals unless the insured later asks in writing to reinstate it.⁷ Minimum liability limits in Montana are $25,000 per person and $50,000 per accident for bodily injury, plus $20,000 for property damage.⁸ Those limits are low enough that UM/UIM coverage ends up doing real work in serious Montana crashes. The three-year civil deadline applies to a lawsuit against your own insurer over UIM benefits, but the policy itself may set its own proof-of-loss or notice requirements running on a different schedule. Read the policy, and don't assume the statute of limitations is the only clock running.

A Montana crash report from the Montana Highway Patrol is usually the first document an insurer or attorney asks for.⁹ Request it early rather than waiting until a deadline is close.

The practical takeaway

Write down the crash date. Add three years for an injury claim and two years for a vehicle damage claim, and treat both as hard outer limits rather than targets. If a minor was hurt, if a government vehicle was involved, or if an insurer is dragging out a settlement, those situations carry their own procedural timing that can shrink the practical window well below three years. A Montana attorney can confirm which deadline actually applies to your facts. You can find one through thatcarhitme.com's legal directory, and given how the comparative negligence and government-notice rules interact, it's worth doing that long before year three arrives.

This is general information, not legal advice.

Sources

1. Mont. Code Ann. 27-2-204, Montana State Legislature, https://mca.legmt.gov/bills/mca/title_0270/chapter_0020/part_0020/section_0040/0270-0020-0020-0040.html

2. Mont. Code Ann. 27-2-207, Montana State Legislature, https://mca.legmt.gov/bills/mca/title_0270/chapter_0020/part_0020/section_0070/0270-0020-0020-0070.html

3. Mont. Code Ann. 27-2-401, Montana State Legislature, https://mca.legmt.gov/bills/mca/title_0270/chapter_0020/part_0040/section_0010/0270-0020-0040-0010.html

4. Mont. Code Ann. 2-9-301, Montana State Legislature, https://mca.legmt.gov/bills/mca/title_0020/chapter_0090/part_0030/section_0010/0020-0090-0030-0010.html

5. Montana Department of Administration, Risk Management & Tort Defense Division, Claims, https://rmtd.mt.gov/claims/

6. Mont. Code Ann. 27-1-702, Montana State Legislature, https://mca.legmt.gov/bills/mca/title_0270/chapter_0010/part_0070/section_0020/0270-0010-0070-0020.html

7. Mont. Code Ann. 33-23-201, Montana State Legislature, https://mca.legmt.gov/bills/mca/title_0330/chapter_0230/part_0020/section_0010/0330-0230-0020-0010.html

8. Mont. Code Ann. 61-6-103, Montana State Legislature, https://mca.legmt.gov/bills/mca/title_0610/chapter_0060/part_0010/section_0030/0610-0060-0010-0030.html

9. Montana Dept. of Justice, Montana Highway Patrol Crash Records, https://www.dojmt.gov/montana-highway-patrol/crash-records/