Most Maine leases I review have a late fee clause that is either too high, too early, or not properly disclosed. Sometimes all three. The statute is short. The rules are mechanical. And yet I see $50 fees on $900 apartments, "rent due on the 1st, late fee on the 5th" clauses, and rules buried in a building handbook the tenant signed three months after move-in. Every one of those is unenforceable in Maine. I want to walk you through exactly what 14 MRS §6028 says, what the 4% is calculated against, when the clock actually starts, and how to write a clause in your lease that holds up.
This post is educational, not legal advice. Maine landlord-tenant law is particular, and the facts of your situation matter. For advice on a specific property or tenant situation, talk to a Maine-licensed attorney or contact Pine Tree Legal Assistance at ptla.org.
What does 14 MRS §6028 actually require?
Three rules. The fee cannot exceed 4% of one month's rent. It cannot be charged until rent is more than 15 days late. And the lease must contain written notice of the fee at the time the tenant signs. All three conditions have to be met. Miss one and the fee is unenforceable.
The statute lives in Title 14, Chapter 710, alongside the rest of Maine's residential landlord-tenant code. The current text appears at 14 MRS §6028 on the Maine Legislature site. It is one of the shortest fee statutes in the code. Three subsections, fewer than 150 words total.
The 15-day grace period
Subsection 1 says rent is "late" only if it is not paid within 15 days of the due date. That language fixes the grace period. If your lease says rent is due on the 1st, the earliest day a late fee can attach is the 16th. Not the 4th. Not the 6th. Not "after a 5-day grace as set forth herein." The 15-day floor is statutory and any shorter period in the lease is overridden by §6028.
I get pushback on this from owners who have seen Florida or Texas leases with 5-day grace periods. Maine is not those states. The 15-day grace is the longest in New England.
The 4% cap
Subsection 2 caps the late fee at "4% of the amount due for one month." Subsection 3 restates the same ceiling as "4% of one month's rent." Same number, same denominator. The 4% is calculated against the monthly rent, not against the unpaid balance, not per day, not per month overdue. Pine Tree Legal Assistance gives the same arithmetic in its Rights of Maine Renters: Paying Rent page: $800 rent × 4% = $32 maximum.
Worked examples at Bangor-area rents:
| Monthly rent | Maximum late fee under §6028 |
|---|---|
| $1,000 | $40 |
| $1,200 | $48 |
| $1,500 | $60 |
| $1,800 | $72 |
| $2,000 | $80 |
One charge per occurrence. Not a recurring monthly accrual. Not a daily compounding fee. If a tenant is two months behind, you cannot stack two months' worth of late fees and call it $96 on a $1,200 unit unless your lease genuinely treats each month's rent as a separate "amount due" — which is the better drafting and the right reading, but worth asking your attorney to confirm against your specific clause.
The disclosure requirement
Subsection 3 says the landlord cannot assess a late fee at all unless the tenant got written notice "at the time they entered into the rental agreement" that a fee up to 4% may be charged. The notice has to be in the lease itself, or in an addendum signed at the same closing. A handbook delivered at move-in does not count. A rules document slipped under the door in month two does not count. The Maine Attorney General's tenant rights page confirms that any agreement to pay a late fee not in writing or exceeding 4% of one month's rent is among the lease provisions a Maine landlord cannot enforce.
When does the 15-day grace period actually start?
The 15 days run from the rent due date set in the lease. Day 1 is the due date. Day 16 is the earliest day a fee can be charged. The clock has nothing to do with notices to quit or the date a check was mailed. It is calendar days from the due date.
This matters because the eviction clock and the late fee clock are different. 14 MRS §6002(1)(C) lets you serve a 7-day notice to quit when a tenant is "7 days or more in arrears in the payment of rent." Day 8 of nonpayment, you can start the eviction. Day 16, you can charge the late fee. They don't move together.
What this means for the eviction sequence
In the many evictions I've filed in Penobscot County District Court since I came back to property management, the clean sequence looks like this:
- Rent due on the 1st. Tenant doesn't pay.
- Day 8 (the 8th of the month): I can lawfully serve a 7-day notice to quit under §6002(1)(C).
- Day 16: late fee accrues if the lease has a §6028-compliant disclosure.
- After the 7-day notice expires and rent is still unpaid: file the FED complaint at the Maine Judicial Branch.
- Court hearing, judgment, 7-day stay, writ of possession.
One detail most landlords miss: the 7-day notice cannot demand the late fee as part of the rent owed. §6002(2) only requires the tenant to pay "rental arrears, all rent due as of the date of payment and any filing fees and service of process fees" to reinstate the tenancy. Late fees are a separate contract claim. If you list "$1,200 rent + $48 late fee" on the notice and the tenant tenders only the $1,200, you may have problems voiding the notice. Keep the late fee off the notice and pursue it as a money judgment if you go to court.
Has the 4% cap or 15-day grace been changed by recent legislation?
No. §6028 has not been amended since 1987. It was enacted by Public Law 1987, c. 215 and lightly amended by P.L. 1987, c. 605 the same session. Every Revisor of Statutes pull since reads the same. Maine's recent fee reforms targeted other parts of Chapter 710, not the late fee statute.
The relevant adjacent reforms are LD 691 (2023) and LD 1490 (2024), both sponsored by Rep. Christopher Kessler (D-South Portland). LD 691 banned application fees and capped screening fees at the landlord's actual cost. LD 1490, signed by Gov. Mills on April 3, 2024, took effect January 1, 2025 and added the "mandatory recurring fee" framework at 14 MRS §6000(1-A), required total-price disclosure in rental ads, and pushed the rent-increase notice for hikes of 10% or more out to 75 days under §6015. None of those bills changed the late fee cap, the grace period, or the disclosure rule.
I keep an eye on the legislative calendar each session. As of April 2026, no bill in the 132nd Maine Legislature would amend §6028. The 4% cap and the 15-day grace are stable.
Does §6028 apply to mobile homes, commercial leases, or short-term rentals?
§6028 applies to residential dwelling units only. The opening sentence says so: "A landlord may assess a penalty against a residential tenant for late payment of rent for a residential dwelling unit." Commercial leases are not covered. Short-term rentals (under 100 days, generally) fall outside Chapter 710 entirely.
Mobile home park lot rent has its own parallel statute at 10 MRS §9097-C. The structure is identical: 15-day grace, 4% of monthly lot rent cap, written notice required at lease signing. If you own a mobile home park in central Maine, the rules read the same; just cite the different statute.
If the park owns the unit and rents it out (mobile home plus lot together), the tenancy falls under Title 14 and §6028 governs the late fee. Title 10 §9097-C only covers lot-rent-only tenancies in mobile home parks.
What happens if the late fee in your lease is non-compliant?
A non-compliant late fee is unenforceable. The tenant can refuse to pay it, raise it as a defense in eviction, or sue for refund in Small Claims Court. The Maine Attorney General lists agreements to pay a late fee not in writing or above 4% among the lease terms a Maine landlord cannot enforce.
PTLA's tips for renters tells tenants outright that a late fee not in writing or above 4% does not have to be paid. So expect that any sophisticated tenant who is behind on rent and reads PTLA's site knows the rule cold.
What §6028 does not say: it does not specify a damages multiplier, a per-violation fine, or attorney's fees. Compare that to §6033, the security deposit return statute, which authorizes double damages for a wrongful retention. §6028 has no equivalent. The downside risk for the landlord is that the fee is uncollectible and the tenant has a refund claim — not statutory penalties.
That makes the practical risk lower than the security deposit risk. It does not make a non-compliant clause harmless. A small claims judgment for $48 plus filing fees is not the worst outcome in the world, but a pattern of those judgments, or a fee clause that gets cited as evidence of bad faith in a larger dispute, is exactly the kind of thing that turns a manageable eviction into an ugly one. Get it right at the lease drafting stage.
Void in part or void in total?
This is the question I cannot give you a clean Maine appellate answer on. I am not aware of a Law Court decision that addresses whether a §6028-violating late fee provision is void in its entirety or severable down to the lawful 4% maximum. Maine's general contract law leans toward severance of unlawful terms, which would suggest the fee is reduced to the statutory cap rather than struck. But a District Court judge could go either way and there is no controlling case to point them at. Treat this as an open question and write your lease to comply on the front end.
What does a §6028-compliant late fee clause look like?
The cleanest model is Section 5(B) of the Maine Attorney General's Model Residential Lease. The AG publishes it as a template Maine landlords can adopt. The fee clause sits in the rent section, names the dollar amount, references the 4% cap, and ties the trigger to the 15-day mark. That is the safe harbor.
If you are drafting your own clause, the four elements I include in every BHR lease:
- The exact dollar amount of the fee, in numerals — not a percentage to be calculated later.
- An express statement that the amount does not exceed 4% of one month's rent.
- The trigger language: not assessed unless rent is more than 15 days past due.
- A reference to 14 MRS §6028 by section number.
I prefer a fixed dollar amount over a "4%" formula because it removes the math the tenant has to do to verify the charge. On a $1,500 unit, the clause says "$60" and there is nothing to argue about. If rent goes up at renewal, the late fee clause gets updated in the new lease.
One drafting choice that comes up: should the clause sit in the lease body or in an addendum? §6028(3) says "at the time they entered into the rental agreement." An addendum signed at the same closing as the lease should satisfy that requirement. A separate document signed later does not. I keep the late fee in the body of the lease for clarity, but if your template lives in an addendum that travels with the lease at signing, you are still inside the statute.
How does §6028 interact with security deposit deductions?
Properly disclosed and lawfully assessed late fees can be deducted from the security deposit under 14 MRS §6033. A non-compliant fee (too high, too early, not disclosed) cannot. Maine's deposit return rules carry their own teeth: the statute allows double damages and attorney fees against a landlord who wrongfully withholds.
That asymmetry is worth holding onto. The downside on a non-compliant late fee is that you cannot collect it. The downside on using a non-compliant late fee to justify a deposit deduction is that you may face a §6033 claim with statutory damages on top. Don't compound a small mistake into a larger one.
Also note the building-size carve-out at §6032 and §6034: the security deposit cap and the double-damages remedy do not apply to buildings of five or fewer units where the landlord lives in one of the units. That carve-out doesn't extend to §6028. The late fee statute applies to every residential tenancy regardless of building size.
Does Bangor's local ordinance change anything?
No. Bangor's Tenant Housing Rights Ordinance (Chapter 282), adopted in February 2023, regulates application fees, screening fees, rent-increase notice, and tenant disclosures. It is silent on late fees. Bangor late fees are governed entirely by 14 MRS §6028, with no local overlay.
Bob Alexander, treasurer of the Greater Bangor Apartment Owners and Managers Association, told Maine Public in February 2023, when the screening fee provisions were being debated, that for most local owners "this is not a revenue stream." That framing applies just as well to late fees. The 4% cap is not a profit center. It is a contract penalty meant to compensate for the administrative cost of a late payment.
If you own outside Bangor city limits, in Brewer, Hampden, Orono, Old Town, Hermon, or anywhere else in our service area, Chapter 282 doesn't apply at all. Just §6028 and the rest of state law.
What's the typical late fee on a Bangor rent today?
Bangor's median rent ran around $1,550 across all bedroom counts in mid-2024, per Zillow Rental Manager data. Working from that median, the maximum compliant late fee is $62. Most Bangor leases I see in the field charge in the $40 to $75 range, which is mathematically inside the cap on the typical unit.
HUD's 2026 Fair Market Rent for the Bangor HMFA, effective October 1, 2025, sits at $1,244 for a one-bedroom and $1,659 for a three-bedroom, per the MaineHousing FMR schedule. On a $1,659 three-bedroom, the maximum lawful fee is $66.36. The problems I see in the field aren't usually the dollar amount. They are the trigger date and the disclosure. Owners write "rent due 1st, late after 5th" because that's what they remember from a previous lease in another state. Or they have a $50 flat fee in the lease but the tenant rents a $900 studio where 4% works out to $36. Both of those are non-compliant.
The fix on both is a 60-second lease edit at the next renewal.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the maximum late fee a landlord can charge in Maine?
Four percent of one month's rent. 14 MRS §6028(2) caps the penalty at "4% of the amount due for one month." On $1,200 rent, the max is $48. On $1,500, it is $60. The cap is per occurrence, not per day. The fee also has to be disclosed in writing in the lease and cannot be charged until rent is more than 15 days past due.
How many days late can rent be in Maine before a late fee?
Fifteen. §6028(1) says rent is "late" only if not paid within 15 days of the due date. For rent due on the 1st, the earliest day a fee may be charged is the 16th. A lease that says "rent late after the 5th" cannot override the statute. The 15-day grace is mandatory. It is the longest residential grace period in New England.
Can a Maine landlord charge a late fee that isn't in the lease?
No. §6028(3) requires written notice of the fee "at the time they entered into the rental agreement." A late fee that doesn't appear in the lease (or in an addendum signed at the same closing) is unenforceable. A handbook delivered at move-in or a rules document added later does not satisfy the disclosure requirement. Pine Tree Legal tells tenants in this situation they don't have to pay.
Can a Maine landlord evict for unpaid late fees?
Not directly. 14 MRS §6002 lets a landlord serve a 7-day notice to quit for unpaid rent. Late fees are not rent under Maine's eviction framework. If a tenant tenders the back rent before the 7-day notice expires, the eviction is voided even if the late fee remains unpaid. Pursue the late fee as a separate money claim, not as a basis for possession.
Can late fees in Maine be daily or compounding?
No. §6028 caps the penalty at 4% of one month's rent, period. The statute does not authorize a daily fee, a compounding fee, or interest on top of the late fee. Any clause that adds "$10 per day after the 16th" or "1.5% monthly interest on unpaid balance" goes beyond what §6028 allows and is vulnerable to challenge as an excess penalty. Stick to the 4% one-time charge.
Does the 4% late fee cap apply to mobile home parks in Maine?
For lot-rent-only tenancies in mobile home parks, the parallel statute is 10 MRS §9097-C, which mirrors §6028 exactly: 15-day grace, 4% cap, written disclosure. If the park owns the unit and rents the home plus lot together, §6028 governs. Either way, the operational rule is identical. Same math, same trigger, same disclosure.
If you own rentals in Bangor or central Maine and want a manager who keeps every lease clause inside the statute the first time, consider us at Bangor Home Rentals. We're a second generation family business managing hundreds of units across Bangor, Brewer, Orono, Old Town, Ellsworth, and more. We'd love to earn your business. You can call us any time at (207) 262-0199 or click here to schedule a free property management consultation. If you're earlier in your research and want to see where we operate, our service area page covers the towns we cover.