The Demand Letter Gives Me 10 Days. Is That Deadline Real?

Who set the deadline, and what that means

A demand letter deadline is a sentence written by the other side's lawyer. It carries exactly the authority of that lawyer, which over your business is none. The sender can act when the date passes, by filing suit or doing whatever else the letter threatens, but the sender could also act the day before or a month after. The deadline schedules the sender's intentions. It does not change your rights.

Ten days is common. Seven, five and 48 hours appear. The shorter the period, the more it tells you about the sender's strategy and the less it tells you about the law. A sender who gives 48 hours on a six-figure claim is either hoping for a panicked payment or planning to file regardless, and either way the deadline is theirs, not yours.

Which deadlines in a demand letter are real

Some letters quote deadlines that do bind one side or the other. They come from statutes, court rules and the contract, and the letter is only reporting them. The main ones in a Texas business dispute:

Notice that several of these bind the sender rather than you. Lien deadlines and limitations are the sender's problem. The DTPA period is a waiting period the sender must observe. Only the 30-day fee window and a contractual cure period put something of yours at stake, and even those do not require a full response, only a decision about tender or cure.

The 30-day window is the one that matters most

Under § 38.002, a claimant on a contract or services claim who is represented by a lawyer, who presents the claim, and who is not paid the just amount within 30 days can recover attorney's fees if they win. A demand letter is presentment. So the real deadline in most commercial demand letters is not the sender's 10 days; it is the 30th day after you received the letter, and what happens on it is that the sender's legal fees start to be recoverable from you to the extent the claim is valid.

This changes the response. If part of the claim is owed, the question is whether to tender that part before day 30. If nothing is owed, the window does not matter, because fees follow only a winning claim. Either way, the sender's 10-day date was never the operative one.

Example

Suppose a Dallas printing company receives a letter on March 1 demanding $22,500 for paper stock, payable "within seven days, failing which suit will be filed without further notice." March 8 passes and nothing happens. The company's records show $22,500 is correct but the supplier agreed in an email to a 60-day term that has not yet run. On March 20 the company writes back, attaches the email, and states that payment will be made on the agreed date. Nothing was lost on March 8. Had the company instead owed the money with no term defense, the relevant date would have been March 31, the 30th day, before which a tender would have cut off the fee claim under § 38.002. The seven days in the letter were the supplier's lawyer's preference, nothing more.

What actually happens when the sender's deadline passes

One of three things, and none of them is automatic:

• The sender files suit. Then the real deadlines begin, starting with the answer date in the citation. A served petition is a court document and its deadline is enforced by default judgment under Rule 99. The consequences of not answering a letter and not answering a lawsuit are very different, as explained in what happens if you ignore a demand letter.
• The sender sends another letter. Usually with a new deadline, which tells you what the first one was worth.
• The sender waits. Many do, because filing costs money and their client has not yet authorized it.

What does not happen: a judgment, a lien, a default, or any loss of your defenses. Missing the sender's date is not a waiver of anything.

Asking for more time

A request for an extension is normal and usually granted, because a sender who refuses one reasonable request looks unreasonable later. Keep it short and specific: acknowledge the letter, say you are reviewing it with your records or counsel, and propose a date by which you will respond. Ask the sender to confirm in writing that no action will be taken before that date. If they refuse, you have learned something about their plans, and you have lost nothing, because the original deadline bound you no more than the new one does.

Do not use the extension request to argue the merits. The method for the eventual response is in how to respond to a demand letter without making it worse.

Contract cure periods are the exception

If your agreement says that a party in default has 30 days after written notice to cure, and the demand letter is that notice, then the 30 days is real in a way the sender's chosen deadline is not. When the cure period ends, the sender may be entitled to terminate, accelerate payments or sue for the default under the contract's own terms. Read the notice clause for the method and address required; a letter that does not comply with the clause may not have started the cure period at all. A short acknowledgment that disputes whether the notice was effective preserves that argument.

Deadlines that bind the sender, not you

A letter that recites "the statute of limitations on this claim expires on" a date, or that threatens a lien filing "by the 15th," is describing the sender's own constraints. Those dates matter to your strategy, because a sender up against limitations has less room to wait, and a lien claimant who misses the notice dates may lose the lien. They are not your deadlines. How long the sender has is covered in how long you have to sue for breach of contract in Texas.

When to have a litigator read the letter

When the amount is material, when the letter cites your contract's notice or cure clause, when it is a DTPA notice, or when it threatens an injunction or a lien. In those cases the question is not whether the sender's date is real, but which of the real dates has already started running and what should be done before it ends. Tina Wysk reviews demand letters for Dallas businesses and separates the deadlines that matter from the ones that do not.