Montana (§§70-25-201 to -206) has the fastest no-deduction clock in America and two procedural rules — the condition statement and the cleaning notice — that decide most of its disputes before court.
How much can a landlord charge?
No statewide cap — but a landlord who takes a deposit must provide a written statement of the unit's condition at move-in, signed by the landlord. No statement, and the landlord's later damage claims start crippled.
The 10/30-day clocks
No deductions: 10 days. With deductions: 30 days, with a written itemized list of every amount withheld — unpaid rent, utilities, late charges, damage beyond ordinary wear and tear, and cleaning.
The cleaning notice — Montana's distinctive rule
Before deducting anything for cleaning, the landlord must give the tenant written notice of the cleaning claimed and 24 hours to do it themselves. Skip the notice, lose the cleaning deduction. Tenants: if you get the notice, clean and photograph; if you don't get it, every cleaning charge on the itemization is contestable.
Why Montana deposit disputes are documentation disputes
Montana's statute is built from condition documents — the move-in statement, the cleaning notice, the itemized list — all prose, all reinterpretable, all stronger with images behind them.
SealMove puts the images beyond argument. Every photo and video is cryptographically sealed the instant it's captured, independently timestamped, and locked with Face ID into a tamper-evident archive. At move-out, the walkthrough lines up room-by-room against the sealed baseline — and either party can send the other a report to review and acknowledge, no app required.