Todd Olivas Deadline Calculator: Where DeadlineCalculator.com Is Now, and the Steps It Leaves to You

It moved. The calculator a lot of California litigation staff bookmarked on toddolivas.com lives at DeadlineCalculator.com now, it is still free, and its author still updates it. He is also unusually blunt about what it does not do, and one of those gaps is the step that actually decides your date.

Built in 2007 by a court reporter, spun off to its own domain, still maintained
Its own notes say it skips the service days and follows no jurisdiction's rules
The tool here counts, rolls, then adds the service extension in the right unit

Counting toward a California motion hearing? The California court deadline calculator carries the motion presets. For a pure court day count use the court days calculator, and if your bookmark was the other well known free tool, see where the Atkinson Baker deadline calculator went.

Deadline worksheet · free, no signup + SERVICE DAYS

Holiday set

Direction

Unit

This day is excluded from the count, exactly as FRCP 6(a)(1)(A) and CCP 12 require.

Number of days

Service method · the step the free counters skip

Service extensions carried here are federal, California and Florida. Local rules and standing orders vary, and a rule can set its own computation, so confirm any computed date against the governing rule before you calendar it.

Dates you enter here are processed in your browser and never stored.

Short answer

The tool moved to its own domain

The Todd Olivas deadline calculator is at DeadlineCalculator.com. Todd Olivas, a California court reporter, wrote it in 2007 as a free extra on his court reporting site, and describes spinning it off into its own domain once the tool started drawing traffic. It is still free, has no login, and still carries dated revision notes from its author.

What it does not do is apply a court rule. Its own disclaimer calls it a simple date calculator whose calculation is not robust enough to base a case timeline on exclusively, and a January 2025 note calls it a general purpose calendar calculator rather than a jurisdiction specific legal deadline tool. Two further notes say it skips the federal service days and the old short period rule. The calculator at the top of this page does the count, the roll, and then the service extension in the unit the rule actually uses.

Why your old bookmark stopped working

From a court reporting site to its own domain

The original address was a page inside a court reporting agency's website, in the era when every vendor gave litigation staff a small free utility. The author tells the story himself on the current site: he is a court reporter, not an attorney, he built the calculator in 2007 as a bit of fun for his agency's site, and it drew enough traffic that he moved it onto its own domain.

2007

Built as a freebie

Written for toddolivas.com, the site of a California court reporting agency, and published as "Deadline and Filing Date Calculator Version 1.0" for paralegals and legal secretaries.

Spun off

DeadlineCalculator.com

In the author's words, what started as a nifty little tool started to get a lot of traffic, so he spun it off into its own domain. That is the address to use today.

2024 to 2025

Still maintained

Juneteenth was added in October 2024, Native American Day and Indigenous Peoples Day in October 2024, and a January 2025 note re-states the tool's scope. It has not been abandoned.

Still free

No login, no paid tier

It remains a free utility published by a court reporting agency. Its terms ask you to do your own independent calculation and to hold the site harmless for a missed deadline.

This is the normal life cycle for a free legal deadline calculator. They are marketing tools published by court reporting and litigation support vendors, so they follow the vendor: the Atkinson-Baker calculator became the Veritext filing date calculator after Veritext acquired the firm in April 2020, and this one moved to a domain of its own. A bookmark that stops working usually means the tool relocated, not that it died.

Read off the site's revision notes

The gaps its own author publishes

Most free tools hide their limits. This one lists them, in dated notes, in public. That candor is the most useful thing on the page, because it tells you exactly which parts of the calculation you still have to do by hand. Here is what those notes say, with the date the author put on each.

Limitations published by DeadlineCalculator.com in its own revision notes, and what each one means for your count
Dated note	What it says	What it costs you
January 2025	A general purpose calendar calculator, not a jurisdiction specific legal deadline tool. It names Florida's computation rule as an example of rules it does not follow.	No state court day sets and no local rules. A California count that has to skip 14 judicial holidays is not what you are getting.
March 2012	It does not take Rule 6(e) into account, which adds three days for service other than hand delivery.	The service days are yours to add. On a mailed motion this is the difference between a timely filing and a late one.
March 2012	It does not take Rule 6(a)(2) into account, which excluded intermediate weekends and holidays for periods under 11 days.	Largely moot now. The 2009 time computation amendments removed the under 11 day rule, and the author's own July 2014 note records that.
October 2021	A reported issue: the tool does not recognize the observed day when Independence Day falls on a weekend, so it may point at a day the courts are actually closed.	Observed shifts matter every year. In 2027 July 4 is a Sunday, so the federal observed holiday is Monday July 5.
November 2017	Two glitches around holidays occurring versus being observed, reported by a New York attorney, with the author writing that he needs to dig deeper into the code.	Same class of problem as above, and still listed. Veterans Day and New Year's Day shift often enough to matter.
October 2024	Juneteenth added, with a warning that not every state observes June 19.	Useful, and a reminder that the holiday table is one person's maintenance list, updated when someone reports a gap.

None of this is a knock on the tool. It is a free utility written by a court reporter who says plainly that he is not an attorney, and it has outlasted most of the paid products that shipped alongside it. The point is narrower: it is a day counter, its author says so, and a day counter stops one step short of a calendared deadline.

The step the note above says it skips

The service days, and the unit each one uses

Service method changes the date. It is also the part people get wrong most often, because the number of days differs by system, the unit differs within the same system, and the rule that everyone still calls "the three day rule" was renumbered and then narrowed. Every row below is read off the rule itself.

Service method extensions under federal, California and Florida rules, with the unit each extension is counted in
System	Service method	Added	Unit	Authority
Federal	Handing it to the person, or leaving it at an office or dwelling	0	None	Not listed in FRCP 6(d)
Federal	Electronic filing system or consented electronic means	0	None	Rule 5(b)(2)(E), removed from 6(d) in 2016
Federal	Mail	3	Calendar days	FRCP 6(d) via Rule 5(b)(2)(C)
Federal	Leaving it with the court clerk (no known address)	3	Calendar days	FRCP 6(d) via Rule 5(b)(2)(D)
Federal	Any other means consented to in writing	3	Calendar days	FRCP 6(d) via Rule 5(b)(2)(F)
California	Personal service	0	None	No extension provided
California	Electronic service	2	Court days	CCP 1010.6(a)(3)(B)
California	Mail, address and mailing both inside California	5	Calendar days	CCP 1013(a)
California	Mail, either point outside California but within the US	10	Calendar days	CCP 1013(a)
California	Mail to a Secretary of State confidentiality program address	12	Calendar days	CCP 1013(a)
California	Mail, either point outside the United States	20	Calendar days	CCP 1013(a)
California	Express Mail or another overnight delivery method	2	Court days	CCP 1013
California	Facsimile transmission	2	Court days	CCP 1013
Florida	Service by mail only	5	Days	Fla. R. Gen. Prac. & Jud. Admin. 2.514(b)
Florida	Email service	0	None	2.514(b) applies only where service is by mail only

The rule everyone still calls 6(e)

It is 6(d), and it no longer covers e-service

The 2007 restyling moved the three day provision from Rule 6(e) to Rule 6(d), which is why the calculator's 2012 note points at a subdivision that no longer exists. Then the 2016 amendment did something larger: it removed electronic service from the list entirely. The committee note is explicit that Rule 6(d) was amended to remove service by electronic means under Rule 5(b)(2)(E) from the modes of service that allow 3 added days.

Since nearly all federal service now runs through CM/ECF, the practical effect is that most federal papers get no extra days at all. Guidance written before December 2016, including the "three days for everything but hand delivery" shorthand, will hand you a date that is three days too generous.

The unit trap

California counts two of its extensions in court days

Federal service days are calendar days. California's mail extensions are calendar days too, and section 1013(a) says so in the text: five calendar days, 10 calendar days, 12, or 20. But the electronic service extension in section 1010.6(a)(3)(B) is two court days, and the Express Mail and fax extensions in section 1013 are also two court days.

That means an e-served California deadline extended over a Thanksgiving week moves further than two dates on a wall calendar. Treating those two court days as two calendar days is a quiet, repeatable way to be a day or two early or late, and it never looks wrong on the page.

The order the rules require

Count, roll, then add. Not the other way around.

The sequence is written into the rules, and it is easy to get backwards. FRCP 6(d) adds the three days after the period would otherwise expire under Rule 6(a), which means the base period is computed and rolled first. Florida Rule 2.514(b) uses the same construction: five days are added after the period that would otherwise expire under subdivision (a).

Step 1

Exclude the trigger day

Counting starts the day after the event. FRCP 6(a)(1)(A) and CCP 12 both say so. Five days from March 1 is March 6.

Step 2

Count in the stated unit

Calendar days count everything. Court days skip weekends and judicial holidays as you go. The rule tells you which one it means.

Step 3

Roll a blocked last day

Forward for a period measured after an event, backward for one measured before a hearing. FRCP 6(a)(5) sets the direction.

Step 4

Add the service days last

In the unit that rule uses, then roll again if the extended date is itself closed. This is the step a plain day counter cannot do for you.

Worked example

A 30 day federal response, served by mail, triggered Thursday October 7, 2027

Exclude the trigger day and count 30 calendar days, which lands on Saturday November 6, 2027. That is a weekend, so under FRCP 6(a)(5) the base period runs to the next open day, Monday November 8. Only now do the three mail days go on, giving Thursday November 11, which is Veterans Day. So the deadline rolls a second time, to Friday November 12, 2027. A rule that reads "30 days" produced a date 36 calendar days out.

Do the same count in the wrong order and you get a different answer. Add the three mail days to the raw November 6 first and you land on Tuesday November 9, which is an ordinary open court day, so nothing looks wrong and nothing prompts you to check. That is three days early, from one transposed step. A plain day counter hands you November 6 and stops there. Set the calculator above to the federal holiday set, 30 calendar days after October 7 2027, service by mail, and it walks through each step.

Why a jurisdiction selector matters

One holiday list is not enough

DeadlineCalculator.com publishes a single list of 12 holidays, federal ones plus a few that only some states observe, and flags the state variation in its own annotations. That is a reasonable design for a general purpose tool. It is not enough to count a state court deadline, because the judicial holiday sets genuinely differ.

California

14 judicial holidays

Adds Lincoln Day, Farmworkers Day, Native American Day and the day after Thanksgiving on top of the federal set. The longest list of the four.

Texas

15 legal holidays

Includes Texas Independence Day, San Jacinto Day and LBJ Day, and applies no observed day shift, so a Saturday holiday stays on the Saturday.

Federal

11 legal holidays

Under FRCP 6(a)(6)(C), for a period measured after an event a day declared a holiday by the state where the district court sits also counts.

Florida

9 legal holidays

The shortest of the four. Five fewer closed days than California across a year, which changes any court day count run in that state.

The gap compounds. In 2026 there are 261 weekdays, and once judicial holidays come out Florida has 252 court days, the federal courts 250, Texas 248 and California 247. Run a 30 court day count on the wrong list and you can be two days out before service days are even considered. Every list is broken out on the court days calculator, and the closure dates themselves are on the court holidays calendar.

Answered in one paragraph each

Questions people actually ask

Where is the Todd Olivas deadline calculator?

It is at DeadlineCalculator.com. Todd Olivas, a California court reporter, built it in 2007 as a free extra on his court reporting site, and in his own words spun it off into its own domain once it started drawing traffic. The tool is still free, still published and still carries dated revision notes.

Is the Todd Olivas deadline calculator accurate?

Its author does not claim it is reliable enough to calendar from. The site states that it is a simple date calculator whose calculation is not robust enough to base a case timeline on exclusively, and a January 2025 note repeats that it is a general purpose calendar tool, not a jurisdiction specific legal deadline tool. Treat its output as a first pass.

Does the Todd Olivas deadline calculator add the three days for service by mail?

No. The site says so directly in a revision note: the calculator does not take Rule 6(e) into account. That provision is now FRCP 6(d), and it adds 3 days when service is made by mail, by leaving the paper with the clerk, or by other consented means. You have to add those days yourself after the base period is computed.

Do you add the three days before or after rolling a weekend deadline?

After. FRCP 6(d) says the 3 days are added after the period would otherwise expire under Rule 6(a), so you count the base period, roll it off a weekend or holiday first, then add the service days. Florida Rule 2.514(b) uses the same order. Adding the extension first and rolling once is a common way to land on the wrong date.

Does electronic service still add three days in federal court?

No. The 2016 amendment removed service by electronic means under Rule 5(b)(2)(E) from the modes that allow 3 added days. Since almost all federal service now runs through CM/ECF, the extension applies far more narrowly than older guidance suggests. Mail, leaving with the clerk and other consented means still get the 3 days.

How many days does California add for service by mail?

Five calendar days when the place of address and the place of mailing are both in California. It is 10 calendar days if either point is outside California but within the United States, 12 for a Secretary of State address confidentiality program address, and 20 if either point is outside the United States. Code of Civil Procedure section 1013(a) sets all four.

How many days does California add for electronic service?

Two court days, not two calendar days. Code of Civil Procedure section 1010.6(a)(3)(B) extends the period by two court days after service by electronic means, so weekends and judicial holidays are skipped while you count the extension. The same section excludes a notice of intention to move for new trial, a motion to vacate under section 663a and a notice of appeal.

Does the start date count when calculating a deadline?

No. The triggering day is excluded and counting starts the next day. FRCP 6(a)(1)(A) states it for federal practice and Code of Civil Procedure section 12 states it for California. Five days from March 1 is therefore March 6, not March 5 and not March 7.

What happens if a court deadline falls on a weekend or holiday?

It moves to the next day the court is open, and the direction depends on how you counted. Under FRCP 6(a)(5) the next day is the day after for a period measured after an event, and the day before for a period measured before an event such as a hearing. A notice deadline counted backward therefore gets earlier, never later.

Is DeadlineCalculator.com free?

Yes. It is free, has no login and carries no paid tier. It is published by Todd Olivas and Associates, a California court reporting agency, as a free tool for paralegals, legal secretaries and lawyers. Its terms of service ask you to do your own independent date calculation and hold the site harmless for a missed deadline.

One deadline is a calculator problem. A docket is not.

A free date calculator is fine for the count in front of you. It does not know the hearing moved, it does not re-run the chain when a trial date is continued, and it does not remember which of your matters were served by mail. Caseagent reads the case file, tracks every deadline against the governing rule and recalculates the chain when a date changes.

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