Georgia Court Filing Fees by County

How Georgia court filing fees are actually set

Georgia behaves like Illinois, not Texas: both halves of the cost vary. Across the 90 counties we have verified the magistrate court's dispossessory filing fee runs from $47 to $120, and what the Sheriff, Marshal or Constable charges to serve the papers and carry out the writ varies on top of that. There is one Georgia-specific trap you will not meet in the other two states: 29 of those counties fold service on the first tenant into the filing fee rather than billing it separately, so adding a published filing fee to a published service fee double-counts. Where we know a county bundles, its page says so and our total does not add service twice.

The single most important thing to know about Georgia fees is that many counties bundle service on the first tenant into the filing fee. 29 of the 90 counties we have checked do it. 14 say so in words — Paulding's schedule reads "$77 includes service on (1) defendant," Thomas's reads "$80.00 (one service fee of $25.00 is included)," Madison's heading says "Includes Sheriff Service Fee" — and 15 we have inferred from the arithmetic, where the charge for each additional tenant is exactly the officer's own service rate and no filing-only option is published. Those inferred counties say on their page that it is our reading rather than the county's statement. Columbia, Carroll and Whitfield settle the question outright by publishing both prices side by side, which is how we know the pattern is real.

Service is not always the Sheriff. 5 of the counties we have checked use a Marshal's Office (Columbia, DeKalb, Fulton, Richmond and Troup) and 4 use a Constable (Bulloch, Fayette, Gordon and Spalding). Calling the Sheriff in one of those counties gets you a polite redirect at best.

There are no jury trials in Georgia magistrate court, so there is no jury demand fee to look up. That is a real structural difference from Illinois and Texas, where the jury fee is one of the numbers people most often get wrong. A defendant who wants a jury has to move the case to State or Superior Court, which has its own and higher fee schedule.

Georgia's documentation is thinner than Illinois's or Texas's, and thin in a particular way: 42 of the counties we have checked publish a fee schedule with no effective date printed on it anywhere, and 36 publish no amount at all. Where a document carries no date, this site says so rather than letting the figure imply it is current. Where a county publishes nothing, we give you the clerk's phone number instead of a number we made up.

A recurring pattern worth knowing before you call: in many counties $25.00 is the dispossessory-specific service rate while $50.00 is the general civil rate for everything else. It is a pattern, not a rule — Ware County charges a flat $22.00 for both — so use the figure on the county's own page over the pattern.

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