Add year to Java Calendar doesn't work

You have a problem with int / long conversion: 365 * 24 * 60 * 60 * 1000 Which evaluates to 31536000000 and therefore exceeds Integer.MAX_VALUE 2147483647 This works:

public static void main(String[] args) {
          Calendar ten_year_later = Calendar.getInstance();
          System.out.println( ten_year_later.getTime() );
          ten_year_later.setTime(new Date()); 
          ten_year_later.add(Calendar.YEAR, 10);
          System.out.println( ten_year_later.getTime() );
          Calendar expiration = Calendar.getInstance(); 
          expiration.setTime(expiration.getTime()); 
          long max = (ten_year_later.getTimeInMillis() - expiration.getTimeInMillis())/(365 * 24 * 60 * 60 * 1000L); 
          System.out.println( "max " + max );
        } 

Your calculation of max is wrong. An int cannot hold a year in millis.

Rather replace it by

max = ten_year_later.get(Calendar.YEAR) - expiration.get(Calendar.YEAR);

Or better, use JodaTime:

DateTime tenYearsLater = new DateTime().plusYears(10);
DateTime expiration = new DateTime(expiration_date.getTime());
Period period = new Period(expiration, tenYearsLater);
return period.getYears();

Here's a simple example of what should work.

Calendar cal = new GregorianCalendar();
cal.setTime(new Date());
cal.add(Calendar.YEAR, yearsToAdd);
Date retDate = cal.getTime();

Just remember to use a long to get the time in milliseconds!