What the Clerk of the Circuit Court (the same elected clerk also serves as Clerk of County Court in every county) 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 Palm Beach 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 | $185 | Florida sets this by statute, not by county. The $185.00 is a $180.00 base tenant-removal filing fee under Fla. Stat. 34.041, plus a $4.00 statutory surcharge and a $1.00 mediation-fund fee. Every county we checked charges exactly this, from Miami-Dade to Washington County. |
| Eviction filing — possession only | $185 | Florida does not charge less for a possession-only eviction. The filing fee is the same $185.00 whether or not you also claim unpaid rent. |
| Appearance fee — eviction defendant | — | |
| Appearance fee — small claims defendant | — | |
| Jury demand — 12 jurors | — | Florida county courts do allow jury trials in eviction and small claims cases, but charge nothing to demand one — the rule committee removed the jury deposit in 1984. That is unusual: most states charge something. |
| Jury demand — 6 jurors | — | No separate six-juror figure — there is no jury demand fee at all in Florida. |
| Jury demand — small claims | — | No fee to demand a jury in Florida small claims. |
| Mediation fee | — | |
| E-filing surcharge | — |
The filing fee is not the whole bill. Somebody has to serve the defendant, and in Florida the sheriff sets that price county by county — it is the most variable number on this page. Sheriff service of the initial eviction summons is a flat $40.00 per person in every county we checked, and executing the writ of possession afterward is a flat $90.00, both set by the statewide sheriff's fee statute rather than by the county. The one variable is a private certified process server, whom a landlord may hire instead of the Sheriff for the initial summons; those fees are market-set and we did not find them published on any official page.
$40.00 per person served, set by Fla. Stat. 30.231 and identical in every Florida county. Add $17.00 for the clerk to issue and prepare the summons.
$90.00 for the sheriff to execute the writ of possession and put the tenant out. Also statutory and uniform statewide.
Florida courts will waive court fees, costs, and charges for people below certain income levels, under Fla. Stat. § 57.081 and Fla. Stat. § 57.082. There is one statewide form — you do not need a Palm Beach County version of it.
| The court waives | If your available income is |
|---|---|
| Full | Household income at or below 200% of the federal poverty guidelines, with a rebuttable presumption against indigency if you own non-homestead property with net equity of $2,500 or more, or a vehicle worth more than $5,000. If the clerk finds you indigent, filing fees, service of process and the summons charge are all waived. |
Like Georgia, Florida is all-or-nothing rather than graduated: you either meet the income and asset test and the fees are waived in full, or you do not and you pay in full. There is no partial or sliding-scale waiver. If the clerk denies your application, you can ask a judge to review it, and the judge can weigh hardship factors the clerk cannot, but the outcome is still a yes-or-no waiver rather than a percentage.
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.
Palm Beach County Circuit Court
Clerk of the Circuit Court (the same elected clerk also serves as Clerk of County Court in every county)
No clerk website found. Contact the county courthouse directly.
Florida Courts E-Filing Portal
E-filing through the statewide portal is mandatory for attorneys under Florida Rule of General Practice and Judicial Administration 2.525, but a self-represented landlord or tenant may still file on paper at the clerk's counter in every county we checked, so it is not mandatory for the person this site is written for. 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.
Unlike Georgia, Florida's eviction and small claims filing fees do not vary by county. Fla. Stat. § 34.041 sets a single statewide fee for every case type, and the total you pay is the same whether you file in Miami-Dade or a one-clerk rural courthouse in the Panhandle. We checked the eviction (removal of tenant) filing fee in eleven counties spanning the largest and smallest — Miami-Dade, Broward, Duval, Orange, Hillsborough, Charlotte, Lee, Walton, Okaloosa, Washington and Hernando — and every one of them charges exactly $185.00. The small claims filing fee is likewise fixed statewide, but tiered by how much money is at stake: $55 for claims under $100, $80 for $100–$500, $175 for $500–$2,500, and $300 for $2,500 up to the $8,000 small claims ceiling. Above that, and up to $15,000, the county court civil fee is $295 plus $5 (or $300, if it is filed on the small claims track by agreement); above $15,000 it is $395 plus $5. What does change from case to case, on top of these fixed filing fees, is the sheriff's charge to serve the summons and the writ of possession, which is billed separately and by the tenant, not the county.
This is one statewide statutory table, not a county-by-county schedule. We are showing it here, unlike Georgia's empty schedule, precisely because Florida has a real one: every county clerk's fee page we checked reprints these same numbers rather than setting its own.
Statutory backbone: Fla. Stat. § 34.041 — Filing fees (county courts). Fla. Stat. § 34.041, as most recently amended; the $180 base tenant-removal figure and the current tiered small-claims fees trace to ch. 2009-204, Laws of Florida (SB 1728), effective June 1, 2009. The clerk's advertised total is not the bare number printed in § 34.041. § 34.041(1)(a)8 sets the base tenant-removal fee at $180, but § 34.041(1)(b) adds a mandatory $4 per-case surcharge (split between the Court Education Trust Fund and an administrative trust fund), and Fla. Stat. § 44.108(1) adds a separate $1 mediation-and-arbitration trust fund fee that applies to "all proceedings in the circuit or county courts." $180 + $4 + $1 = $185, which is the exact figure every county clerk's page we checked publishes. The same $4 and $1 add-ons explain why the small-claims tiers print as $55/$80/$175/$300 rather than the $50/$75/$170/$295 base amounts named in the statute's claim-value table. 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.