What the Clerk of the Superior Court charges to file an eviction or a small claims case, what the sheriff charges to serve it, and how to ask the court to waive the fees.
Filing fee plus sheriff service plus enforcing the order, using only figures we have verified for this county. Attorney fees, if you use one, are on top of this and are not included.
Everything the clerk charges on an eviction or small claims case in Mendocino County. The figures set by state statute are verified and apply here. A dash means we have not yet read this county’s own schedule — not that the fee is zero.
| Fee | Amount | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Eviction filing — possession + rent claim | $240 | For a standard residential eviction where the back rent claimed is $10,000 or less, California's statutory filing fee is $240.00 almost everywhere. It rises to $385.00 if the rent claimed is between $10,000 and $35,000, and to $435.00 above that. Riverside, San Bernardino and San Francisco add a further local courthouse-construction surcharge of $50.00, $35.00 or $10.00 on top of whichever tier applies. |
| Eviction filing — possession only | $240 | California does not charge a different, lower fee for possession-only cases. The fee depends on the dollar amount demanded, and a possession-only complaint demanding no money falls in the lowest tier, so it costs the same $240.00 as a claim for $10,000 or less in back rent. |
| Appearance fee — eviction defendant | — | |
| Appearance fee — small claims defendant | — | |
| Jury demand — 12 jurors | $150 | A single, nonrefundable $150.00 advance jury fee per party demanding a jury, the same figure for a 12-person civil jury as for any other size — California does not print a separate, larger fee for a full 12-person panel. |
| Jury demand — 6 jurors | — | California does not have a separate, cheaper fee for a smaller jury. The $150.00 advance jury fee is a flat amount regardless of how many jurors the parties end up with. |
| Jury demand — small claims | — | There is no jury trial, and so no jury fee, in California small claims court. Cases are decided informally by a judge or a court-appointed temporary judge. |
| Mediation fee | — | |
| E-filing surcharge | — |
The filing fee is not the whole bill. Somebody has to serve the defendant, and in California the sheriff sets that price county by county — it is the most variable number on this page. Sheriff (or, in Shasta and Trinity Counties, Marshal) service of the unlawful detainer summons is a flat $50.00 per person served everywhere we checked, and executing the writ of possession afterward is a flat $180.00, both set by state statute rather than by the county. We did not find evidence of counties charging their own, different rate for either figure.
$50.00 per person served, set statewide by Gov't Code § 26721.2 effective January 1, 2024. Confirmed on current Sheriff fee pages in four counties; a page showing $40.00 or another lower figure is almost certainly out of date.
$180.00 total to execute a writ of possession and put the landlord back in possession — $105.00 to serve the writ on the occupant plus $75.00 to physically carry out the removal — set statewide by Gov't Code § 26733.5, also effective January 1, 2024.
California courts will waive court fees, costs, and charges for people below certain income levels, under Gov't Code §§ 68630–68640 and Cal. Rules of Court, rules 3.50–3.63. There is one statewide form — you do not need a Mendocino County version of it.
| The court waives | If your available income is |
|---|---|
| Full — automatic | You receive certain public benefits, such as SSI/SSP, CalWORKs, CalFresh (food stamps), Medi-Cal or unemployment compensation, or your household income is at or below 200% of the federal poverty guideline for your household size. |
| Full or partial — judge's discretion | Your income is above 200% of the guideline, but paying the fee would still mean not being able to pay for food, shelter or other basic necessities. A judge can grant a full waiver, a partial waiver of part of the fee, or let you pay in installments. |
California is graduated, not all-or-nothing the way Georgia and Florida are. Below roughly 200% of the federal poverty line, or if you already receive certain public benefits, the waiver is automatic and full. Above that line, a judge can still grant a partial waiver or a payment plan based on your actual financial hardship, which means someone who does not qualify for the automatic waiver is not necessarily stuck paying the full fee.
Fee waiver information verified July 31, 2026 against the Illinois General Assembly statute text and the Illinois Courts approved-forms library. We report what the statute and the form say. We cannot tell you whether you qualify — that is the court's decision.
Mendocino County Circuit Court
Clerk of the Superior Court
No clerk website found. Contact the county courthouse directly.
None — no single statewide portal
California has no statewide e-filing portal the way Florida does. Each of the 58 Superior Courts certifies its own list of electronic filing service providers, and many, including Los Angeles, require attorneys to e-file civil cases by local rule. California Rule of Court 2.253(b)(1) is what makes this a county-by-county choice rather than a state one, and the same rule flatly exempts self-represented parties from any mandatory e-filing requirement, so a tenant or small landlord filing without a lawyer can always file on paper. eFileIL →
We publish the court's and clerk's own contact information and link to their pages. We do not take your information, route you to anyone, or file anything on your behalf. For questions about court procedure — as opposed to what it costs — use the Illinois Courts self-help center.
California's eviction filing fee is set by the Legislature, not by the county, and in 55 of the 58 counties the number on the clerk's fee page is exactly what the statute says: $240.00 to file an unlawful detainer where the amount demanded is $10,000 or less, $385.00 where it is more than $10,000 up to $35,000, and $435.00 above that (which puts the case in unlimited civil). We checked eleven counties spanning the largest and smallest — Los Angeles, San Diego, Orange, Sacramento, San Francisco, Riverside, San Bernardino, Santa Clara, Fresno, Santa Barbara and Alameda — and every one of them either matches those numbers exactly or explains, in writing, why it charges more. The three that charge more do so for a specific, statutorily-capped reason: Riverside, San Bernardino and San Francisco are each authorized under Government Code §§ 70622, 70624 and 70625 to add a local courthouse-construction surcharge to every limited civil filing, currently $50.00, $35.00 and $10.00. So the real range for a standard eviction where less than $10,000 is at stake runs from $240.00 in most of the state up to $290.00 in Riverside. This is a much narrower kind of variation than Georgia's, where 159 different counties each set their own number by local rule — here, one statute sets the base and three named counties are allowed to add a fixed, published surtax on top of it.
This is a genuine statewide fee table published by the Judicial Council, not a county-by-county patchwork the way Georgia's magistrate fees are. Every Superior Court's own fee schedule we checked reprints these same numbers, aside from the three counties' published construction surcharges noted above.
Statutory backbone: Cal. Gov't Code § 70613; Code Civ. Proc. § 1161.2(d) — Uniform fee for filing the first paper in a limited civil case, and the unlawful detainer surcharge. Gov't Code § 70613, as most recently amended, together with the courthouse-construction surcharge statutes Gov't Code §§ 70622 (Riverside), 70624 (San Bernardino) and 70625 (San Francisco). § 70613(a) sets the base limited-civil filing fee at $330.00, reduced under § 70613(b) to $205.00 where the amount demanded is $10,000 or less. Code Civ. Proc. § 1161.2(d) adds $15.00 to an unlawful detainer plaintiff's first paper on top of that, and Gov't Code § 70602.5 adds a further $20.00. For the lower tier that reconciles exactly: $205 + $15 + $20 = $240, matching every county schedule we checked. For the upper tier it does not: $330 + $15 + $20 = $365, but every current schedule we checked prints $385.00, a $20.00 gap we could not trace to a specific line item. We are publishing $240 / $385 / $435 regardless, because every current county fee schedule we checked and the Judicial Council's own statewide schedule state them directly as the total due — a filer does not need to add the components up themselves — but we flag the $20.00 discrepancy in the upper tier as something we could not fully document. Statute text checked July 31, 2026.
Compiled and verified by David Scott. We re-check every source document monthly and re-read any county whose schedule has changed. If the clerk quotes you something different from what is on this page, tell us and we will fix it. Read the full methodology.