Does California's 21-day security deposit deadline include weekends?

If you're a former California tenant waiting on your security deposit back, or waiting on the itemized statement explaining any deductions, your landlord has 21 days from your move-out to send one or the other. A lot of tenants assume that's 21 business days, since that's how a lot of other legal deadlines work, but this one doesn't work that way. Every day on the calendar counts toward the total, Saturdays, Sundays, and holidays included.

That matters most at the edges. Picture the count landing on a Sunday, courthouse closed, nobody around to receive anything. The deadline doesn't slide to Monday. It's still that Sunday, and if your landlord's itemized statement or your money arrives Monday morning, he's already late. Eviction deadlines work the opposite way, worth knowing, since they're counted in court days that skip weekends, so a tenant who's dealt with both an eviction and a deposit dispute can walk away with exactly the wrong instinct for the other one.