What Happens After a 5-Day Notice? Introducing the Arizona Eviction Timeline Explainer
If an eviction notice is sitting on your table right now, skip this post: open the Eviction Timeline Explainer, tap where you are in the process, and it lays out what happens next, how many days you have, and who to call. Everything below is why we built it.
Arizona runs one of the fastest eviction processes in the country. For nonpayment of rent, the road from a 5-day notice to a constable at the door can take as little as two to three weeks: five days on the notice, a court filing the day after it expires, a hearing three to six days after the summons, and a writ of restitution five days after judgment. Maricopa County files tens of thousands of eviction cases a year at roughly twice the national rate — and most tenants walk into that process never having seen a map of it.
The process is fast. It is not a black box.
Here is what gets lost in the panic: every stage of an Arizona eviction has rules the landlord must follow and options the tenant still holds. A 5-day notice is not a court order — pay in full within the window and no case can be filed. A partial payment your landlord accepts without a signed written agreement blocks a nonpayment filing for that period. Even after the case is filed, Arizona law gives you the right to reinstate your lease by paying everything owed at any point before the judge enters judgment — the landlord cannot refuse it. And no landlord, ever, may change your locks or shut off your power; only a constable or sheriff carrying a court-issued writ can remove you.
People lose homes they could have kept because nobody told them which of those doors was still open at their stage. That is the gap this tool closes.
What the explainer does
It asks one question: where are you in the process? Behind on rent with no notice yet. Holding a 5-day notice. Served with a summons. Facing a hearing. On the wrong end of a judgment. Watching a writ get executed. For each stage it shows, in plain language, what that stage actually means, the specific clock that is running, a short list of concrete next steps — and the phone numbers that matter, starting with free legal aid. Below that sits the whole timeline at a glance, so you can see the road ahead instead of guessing at it.
It is deliberately not a chatbot and not a form. There is nothing to fill out, no account, and nothing you tap ever leaves your phone.
The single most important thing it says
If you take one sentence from the tool, take this one: go to your hearing. Skipping it — because you have decided to move, because it feels hopeless, because court is frightening — means an automatic default judgment, even if you had a winning defense. And tenants with a lawyer do dramatically better than tenants without one, which is why every stage of the tool points to Community Legal Services (free for eligible renters, 602-258-3434) and the Arizona Bar Foundation’s free live chat at AZEvictionHelp.org. We wrote about the evidence behind that gap in our brief on right to counsel in eviction court.
What it is not
The explainer covers the standard nonpayment-of-rent process for apartments, houses, condos, and townhomes — the overwhelming majority of Arizona eviction cases. It is not legal advice, and it does not cover every situation: other notice types run on different clocks, and mobile home parks and RV lots have separate statutes entirely. Where your case is unusual, the tool says so plainly and routes you to a human who can actually advise you. Every claim in it is sourced to the Arizona statutes, the Arizona Bar Foundation’s AZEvictionHelp.org, AZCourtHelp.org, and the Maricopa County Justice Courts, with the sources listed at the bottom of the page.
Built like everything else here
No personal information is collected and there is no server to send it to — the only thing the page remembers is which stage you tapped, on your own device, so it can pick up where you left off. It loads fast on an older phone and works down to a 375-pixel screen. And if the numbers or rules change, the page carries a visible last-verified date so you know exactly how fresh it is.
It’s free, private, and takes about a minute: Open the Eviction Timeline Explainer →
An explainer, not legal advice. Laws and court procedures change, and your case may differ. For advice on your situation, call Community Legal Services at 602-258-3434, chat free at AZEvictionHelp.org, or call 2-1-1 for rental assistance near you — and verify anything time-sensitive before you rely on it.
Have a correction or an idea to make this clearer? Contact us — we read every note.