Java Security

When validating CA issued or Self signed, does it verify the expire time of the certificate and what are the consequences if the certificate is expired?
Basically in my application to connect to email server on SSL port I'm using self signed certificate which expires after certain period of time. Even though certificate is expired, it is not giving any warning or throwing any exception. I use case is that it should throw exception or give some warning message so that user will get the new certificate again. Can we force it to validate the expire time of certificate? If yes, how do we do that?

Thanks,
PrasadKT