Maryland Court Filing Fees by County

How Maryland court filing fees are actually set

Maryland is not Georgia and it is not quite Florida either. The District Court of Maryland is one statewide court, not a separate court per county, and its filing fees are set once, centrally, by the Chief Judge of the District Court under Courts and Judicial Proceedings § 7-301(b) rather than by each county's own clerk or local rule. That produces a single official cost schedule that applies at every location in the state, with exactly one carve-out: Baltimore City. A Failure to Pay Rent case costs $50.00 to file in every county and $60.00 in Baltimore City. A Tenant Holding Over or Breach of Lease case costs $56.00 everywhere except Baltimore City, where it is $66.00. We read the schedule itself rather than any county's summary of it, and because it is one document governing the whole state, checking individual county clerk pages the way we did for Georgia would only reconfirm the same two numbers; the meaningful check was against the statewide document and the statute that authorizes it, effective March 1, 2026.

The statutory caps

This is a real, single, statewide cost schedule, form DCA-109, published by the District Court of Maryland itself and effective March 1, 2026. It is closer in kind to Florida's statutory table than to Georgia's empty one, with one difference worth flagging: Florida's dollar figures sit directly in the statute passed by the Legislature, while Maryland's sit in an administrative schedule the Chief Judge of the District Court is authorized to set and change without a new statute. That makes the schedule itself, not the enabling statute, the document to check for the current number.

Source: Md. Code, Courts and Judicial Proceedings § 7-301, District Court costs. Courts and Judicial Proceedings § 7-301, Title 7, Subtitle 3 (District Court). Section 7-301(a) sets the base rule that District Court civil filing fees and costs are "those prescribed by law," subject to change by law, rule, or administrative regulation. Section 7-301(b) then gives the Chief Judge of the District Court authority to add a surcharge of up to $43.00 per summary ejectment case and up to $28.00 per case for other civil filings, with the money going to things like legal services and rental assistance funds, and a further surcharge of up to $10.00 per case in Baltimore City on ejectment, tenant holdover, breach of lease, and warrant of restitution filings. The $50/$60 and $56/$66 figures on the current cost schedule are the Chief Judge's exercise of that authority, not numbers printed directly in the statute itself, which is why the schedule rather than the bare statute is the number to trust. Checked August 1, 2026.

The most important structural fact about Maryland is that there is only one District Court in the state. It is not 24 separate courts the way Florida has 67 county courts, and it is nothing like Ohio's patchwork of 88 municipal and county courts. It is a single, state-funded court with locations spread across 12 administrative districts, and its filing fees are set once, centrally, by the Chief Judge of the District Court rather than by any individual county. Baltimore City is one of those locations and is legally its own jurisdiction, not part of any surrounding county, which is why you will sometimes see it listed apart from Maryland's 23 counties. For eviction filing fees, Baltimore City is also the one place in the state that charges a different amount.

A Failure to Pay Rent case, Maryland's most common eviction filing, costs $50.00 in every county and $60.00 in Baltimore City. A Tenant Holding Over or Breach of Lease case, used when the dispute is not about unpaid rent, costs $56.00 outside Baltimore City and $66.00 inside it. Those four numbers come from the District Court's own cost schedule, effective March 1, 2026, not from a law firm's estimate or an old blog post, and they are the whole of the variation we found: no county on its own charges anything different from what the statewide schedule says.

Service works differently depending on which case you file. A standard Failure to Pay Rent case is served by posting the property and mailing a copy, and that costs $5.00 for each tenant of record, on top of the filing fee. A Tenant Holding Over or Breach of Lease case requires personal service by the sheriff or constable by law, which costs $40.00 per defendant, a meaningfully bigger add-on than the $5.00 mail fee most Failure to Pay Rent filers pay. After judgment, having the sheriff or constable actually carry out the eviction, called a Warrant of Restitution, costs $40.00 per case everywhere in the state, plus an extra $10.00 court fee that applies only in Baltimore City.

Maryland's District Court does not hold jury trials in eviction or small claims cases, full stop, because a party cannot even demand one in District Court unless the amount in controversy is over $25,000, and if they do, the whole case is transferred to Circuit Court rather than tried before a jury where it started. That puts Maryland closer to Georgia's magistrate court, which has no juries at all, than to Florida, which allows a jury demand at no extra charge. Either way, if you are filing or defending an eviction or a small claim in Maryland, a jury demand fee is not something you will ever be asked to pay, because the option is not on the table.

The fee waiver process has one wrinkle worth knowing before you file: Maryland decides it in two separate steps rather than one. The court rules on your Request for Waiver of Costs for the filing fee itself when the case starts, and rules again, separately, on waiving any costs that come up later in the case, such as service fees. Both decisions use the same poverty test, so qualifying once does not automatically waive a cost that arises after the case is already underway; you may need to ask again.

Common questions