Limitation periods in Cyprus: how long you have to sue

Limitation is the question behind almost every first meeting: how long do I have. The answer in Cyprus is in the Limitation of Actionable Rights Law, Law 66(I)/2012, and it is not one period but a dozen, with a set of rules that stop the clock, restart it, or let a court set it aside altogether.

Two features of the Law surprise people on both sides of a dispute. A claimant who has missed a deadline is not always out of time, because time may never have started or may have been suspended for years. A defendant who is plainly out of time still wins nothing unless the point is taken: section 20 forbids the court to consider limitation of its own motion, and section 21 requires a party with a legitimate interest to plead it.

When time starts, and the date the clock was reset

Section 3 is short and it does two things. Time begins to run when the cause of action is complete, which is not always the day of the wrongful act: a contract claim is complete on breach, a negligence claim when damage is suffered. Then the proviso, which is easy to miss and decides many older claims: without prejudice to sections 24 and 29, time is counted from 1 January 2016.

That matters because the Law came into force on 1 July 2012 under section 28, and a series of amendments deferred the running of time until the start of 2016. A claim whose cause of action was complete well before then does not have its clock run from the older date.

The periods

• Ten years, the general period. Under section 4, unless another law provides otherwise, no action may be brought after ten years from completion of the cause of action. This is the residual rule, not the usual one.
• Six years for contract. Section 7(1), subject to the two exceptions below.
• Three years for professional fees. Section 7(2) covers a claim on contract or quasi contract for the agreed or reasonable fee of an advocate, doctor, dentist, architect, civil engineer, contractor or other independent professional.
• Six years for a civil wrong. Section 6(1), subject to subsections (2), (3) and (4).
• Three years for negligence, nuisance and breach of statutory duty. Section 6(2), running from completion of the cause of action, unless the injured person became aware of the injury later, in which case time runs from the day of knowledge.
• One year for defamation or malicious falsehood, under section 6(4). The shortest period in the Law.
• Six years on bills, cheques and bank products. Section 8 covers a book debt owed by or to a credit institution; a bill of exchange, cheque or promissory note; and debts arising from hire purchase, the purchase or discounting of receivables, financial leasing, credit card use, overdrafts and anything else presented from time to time as a banking or similar product, excluding loans.
• Twelve years on a mortgage or pledge. Section 5(1), and by section 5(2) a process of sale of mortgaged immovable property or a pledged thing under any law counts as an action, so the twelve years bind the foreclosure route too.
• Eight years on an estate. Section 9(1) for a claim by an heir or legatee in respect of a deceased's estate, a share in it or a legacy, and section 9(2) for a claim about the validity of a will, both running from the day of death.
• Fifteen years on a judgment. Section 10, running from the day the judgment became final.

Section 11 ties an action for accounts to the claim behind it: it cannot be brought once the period has expired for the claim from which the duty to account arises.

Loans, and the demand that starts the clock

Section 7(3) deals with a debt that many lenders and borrowers assume is already time barred. Where a contract arises from a loan agreement that (a) does not provide for repayment on or by a specified or ascertainable date, and (b) does not require notice to the debtor as a condition of repayment, time does not begin before a written demand is served on the debtor by or on behalf of the lender, or by one of joint lenders.

A proviso adds the important qualification: where the borrower granted a mortgage or pledge as security for the loan, section 5 applies, so the twelve year period governs. Note also that section 8 expressly excludes loans from the six year banking products rule, so a loan is not caught by that shorter period.

When time does not start, or stops

Section 12 lists relationships in which time does not start, or is suspended if it has started: between spouses during the marriage, even if the marriage is later annulled; between parents and children during minority; between trustees and beneficiaries during the beneficiary's minority or, where the beneficiary is unborn, until birth and majority; between executors or administrators and heirs or legatees during the latter's minority; and between cohabiting partners during the cohabitation.

Section 13 suspends time in four further cases. The first two are narrow and share a condition worth reading carefully: they apply where the obstacle falls within the last six months of the period. They are, first, for so long as the claimant was prevented by a moratorium or by force majeure from bringing the action in that final six months; and second, for so long as, within that final six months, the defendant or a person for whom the defendant is responsible prevented the claimant from suing. The third is the death of the person entitled to sue, where suspension lasts until three months after an executor or administrator is appointed. The fourth is mediation: time is suspended for as long as a mediation process, taken to have begun under the applicable law, continues.

Section 15 then makes the arithmetic plain: a period of suspension under sections 12 and 13 is not counted in the limitation period.

Incapacity

Section 16(1) excludes from the calculation any period during which the person against whom time runs is an incapable person and has no personal representative who is not himself incapable. Section 16(2) defines the term: a person under 18, or who by reason of mental or physical illness or condition is unable to manage their property and conduct their affairs.

Fraud, deliberate concealment and mistake

Section 14(1) provides that time does not begin to run where the action concerns the defendant's fraud, or where the defendant has deliberately concealed a fact relevant to the cause of action, or where the action seeks relief from the consequences of a mistake, until the claimant discovers, or could with reasonable diligence have discovered, the fraud, concealment or mistake.

Two refinements matter in practice. Under section 14(2), discovery by an agent or other person who binds the claimant starts the clock just as the claimant's own discovery would. Under section 14(3), a deliberate breach of duty in circumstances making it particularly difficult to discover is equivalent to deliberate concealment of the fact of that breach. A professional who hides a failure is therefore not helped by the passage of time.

What restarts the clock from zero

Section 17 is the provision creditors should know and debtors should be careful about. Time is interrupted and treated as beginning afresh in four cases.

• Where the person liable acknowledges the right of action in writing.
• In the case of a money debt, where the person liable pays a part of the debt exceeding 50% of the total, including any interest payable. A smaller payment does not restart it.
• By the issue of an action. If the action is withdrawn in a way that creates no res judicata, or dismissed on non substantive grounds, or dismissed under the procedural rules on filing of pleadings and the summons for directions, the time elapsed since it was issued counts as suspension under section 15; and if the claimant brings an identical action within six months, time is treated as having been interrupted by the earlier action.
• By the commencement of arbitration, which is taken to begin when one party serves notice on the other calling for the appointment of, or agreement on, an arbitrator, or where the arbitration agreement names the person to whom the reference is to be made.

Section 18 adds that a counterclaim is treated, for limitation purposes, as filed on the same day as the action. Section 27 stops a contractual device: whatever an arbitration agreement says about no cause of action arising until an award, the cause of action is not postponed for limitation purposes.

The two year extension, and the two year discretion

There are two separate escape routes and they are often confused.

Section 22 is general. Despite any other section of the Law, the court may extend the limitation period by up to two years where it considers it just and reasonable in the circumstances. The application is made by originating summons before the action is brought, or by interlocutory application after limitation has been pleaded under section 21.

Section 6(3) is specific to claims for damages for personal injury or death caused by a civil wrong. There the court has a discretion to disapply the limitation provisions altogether, having regard to the reasons for and length of the delay in filing, the duration of the claimant's or the deceased's incapacity to handle the case, the effort made to secure the necessary evidence, the defendant's attitude to that effort, and the consequences of the delay for the securing and the reliability of evidence. A proviso limits it: the discretion will not be exercised after two years from the day the right to bring the action became time barred.

The thirty nine month suspension for negligence claims

Section 27Α stands apart from everything above. Notwithstanding the provisions of the Law, the limitation period for an actionable right for negligence or breach of statutory duty against a natural or legal person is suspended for a period of thirty nine months from the date the Limitation of Actionable Rights (Amending) Law of 2021 came into force. The thirty nine months is the figure the consolidated text now carries after Laws 58(I)/2021, 53(I)/2022 and 26(I)/2023.

Anyone assessing whether a negligence claim is out of time has to take that suspension into account before concluding anything, and so does anyone defending one.

Property in the areas not under government control

Section 23 suspends time for four categories tied to the events of 1974: a cause of action connected with immovable property situated in an area not controlled by the Government of the Republic; one connected with movable property that was in such an area and has not been moved to the free part of the territory; one connected with immovable or movable property under custodianship under the Turkish Cypriot Properties (Administration and Other Matters) (Temporary Provisions) Law; and any right of action for or against a person whose fate is unknown as a result of the Turkish invasion, where suspension of a claim against a missing person ceases when an administrator is appointed under the law on the property of missing persons.

What the Law does not touch

Section 24 preserves special time limits in other statutes, among them those for compensation under the defective products legislation, so a shorter or different period elsewhere is not overridden. Section 25 is broader still: the Law does not apply to, and does not affect, public law obligations or rights. A challenge to an administrative decision runs on its own timetable, not on this one.

Finally, section 19 closes a door that occasionally opens by accident: payments made by a debtor in ignorance that the limitation period had expired are not recoverable. Paying a stale debt by mistake does not entitle the payer to it back.

Questions we are asked

This article is for general information only and does not constitute legal advice. Laws and their application can change, and individual circumstances differ. For advice on your own matter, contact Klitos Platis at klitos@kleanthousplatis.com or telephone +357 22 680 330.

Klitos Platis

Advocate, Partner

Kleanthous & Platis LLC, Nicosia · Published 22 August 2026