Based on a comprehensive systematic analysis, the article examines the types of time limits for the protection of rights and legitimate interests in civil law. The relevance of the topic is due to the fact that protection is one of the main guarantees of human and civil rights and freedoms in the field of civil law relations. The established time limits for the protection of rights and legitimate interests determine the conditions for judicial protection of a violated subjective right. Time affects legal relations through legal facts and determines the time limits for the exercise and protection of subjective rights and obligations. The object of the study is the norms of civil law that determine the time limits for the protection of rights and legitimate interests. The subject of the study is the very concept, essence, and types of time limits that determine the time periods with which the norms of civil law associate certain legal consequences regarding the protection of rights and legitimate interests. The methodological basis consists of general scientific (dialectical and systemic-structural) and special research methods – formal-legal, historical-legal, comparative-legal, logical, and lexical-grammatical interpretation of legal norms. It is indicated that a legal term is a conditionally independent legal fact, the effect of which manifests itself only within the framework of a complex legal structure in conjunction with events or actions. The terms for the protection of rights and legitimate interests are a substantive legal institution. The institution of terms for the protection of rights and legitimate interests in civil law has substantive and procedural significance, which consists in its ability to influence the development of civil procedural relations in the context of the protection of rights and legitimate interests. The types of time limits for the protection of rights and legitimate interests in civil law have a common goal – to ensure the stability of existing legal relations, as well as the unity of procedural functions as a basis for procedural protection in a case. The types of protection periods are directly related to legal relations, which allows us to identify the following in these legal relations: subjects, persons whose actions determine the initiation of the possibility of applying the period; grounds – legal facts that determine the beginning of the period; subject matter; legal consequences.