Missouri Court Filing Fees by County

How Missouri court filing fees are actually set

The make-or-break structural question resolves cleanly: Missouri hears rent-and-possession and small claims cases in the Associate Circuit Division of the Circuit Court, and RSMo chapter 478 lays out, county by county, which of the state's 46 numbered judicial circuits each county belongs to — several rural circuits share one circuit judge across two or more counties, but every one of the state's 114 counties, plus the City of St. Louis as its own separate jurisdiction, keeps its own associate circuit judge resident in and elected from that county, so the county (or the City of St. Louis) is the right unit to publish at, the same as Florida and unlike Ohio. Whether the fee itself varies is a harder question to answer with confidence than it was for Georgia or Florida, because Missouri's own filing-fee statute does not print a dollar figure at all: RSMo 483.530 sends the clerk to RSMo 488.010 through 488.020 to find the amount, and those sections only define terms and set collection procedure — no case-category dollar table appears anywhere in the chain. That means each circuit's own administrative order, not the legislature, appears to set the number, which is a more extreme version of the local-rule pattern Georgia has. The two circuit fee schedules we were able to read confirm real variation: Jackson County (Kansas City) charges $62.50 to file a rent-and-possession case and $27.50 for small claims, while Buchanan County (St. Joseph) charges $43.50 and $30.50 for the same two case types. We were only able to read a full, current fee schedule for two of Missouri's 115 courts this round — several other county sites we checked, including Franklin County, confirmed a schedule exists but only "available upon request" rather than posted online, and others did not load at all — so we are publishing this as a genuine two-point range rather than a broad survey, and we say so plainly rather than padding it with unconfirmed numbers.

Missouri hears both kinds of eviction case — rent and possession under chapter 535 and unlawful detainer under chapter 534 — in the Associate Circuit Division of the Circuit Court, and there is one associate circuit judge, sometimes more in a populous county, resident in and elected from every one of the state's 114 counties. The City of St. Louis is its own separate court jurisdiction, the 22nd judicial circuit, not part of any county, so this site treats it as its own entry alongside the 114 counties for 115 in total. Several rural circuits share one circuit judge across two, three, four or even five counties — the 26th circuit, for example, covers Camden, Laclede, Miller, Moniteau and Morgan counties together — but that sharing is at the circuit-judge level, not the associate level, so it does not change which county's court you file in or what that county's court charges.

Two counties run a specialized landlord-tenant court inside their circuit court rather than sending the case to an ordinary associate circuit judge: the City of St. Louis and Jackson County, each authorized by its own statute (RSMo 535.200 and 535.210) to appoint up to two attorney "commissioners" who hear these cases first, with a right to ask for a full associate circuit judge within ten days if you are unhappy with the commissioner's ruling. It is a different judicial officer, not a different court, and the county-level structure of this site still applies to both.

We could not find a dollar figure for the rent-and-possession or small claims filing fee written into the Missouri Revised Statutes anywhere. The statute that tells the clerk what to collect, RSMo 483.530, points to two more sections that only define terms and set collection procedure, with no case-category price table. That is a structural difference even from Georgia, whose magistrate courts at least have a $22 statutory cap to work from — Missouri's circuits appear to set their own number by local administrative order with no statutory ceiling we could find at all. The two counties whose current schedule we could read bear that out: Jackson County charges $62.50 for rent and possession and $27.50 for small claims, Buchanan County charges $43.50 and $30.50. We were not able to read a schedule for enough other counties to call this a full survey, and we say that plainly rather than guessing at a wider range.

Sheriff service is billed separately from the filing fee everywhere we could confirm it, not bundled in the way it sometimes is in Georgia. But we could not get the sheriff's own total to reconcile with the statute that sets it: RSMo 57.280 layers a $20 base service charge, a $15 or $20 county-classification add-on, and up to $50 more specifically for an eviction, which on paper could reach $85 to $90 — yet Jackson County's own schedule lists one flat $46.00 civil-process charge with no separate eviction line, and Buchanan County's schedule tells you to call the sheriff rather than printing a number at all. Budget for the possibility that the true cost is higher than a county's advertised filing fee alone would suggest, and confirm the service charge with the sheriff's civil-process office before you file.

A jury is available in a rent-and-possession case if a party files a timely written demand under RSMo 517.091 — twelve jurors by default, or as few as six if every party agrees — and there is no fee attached to making that demand. Small claims court is the opposite extreme: RSMo 482.310(6) rules out a jury entirely, so there is nothing to demand and no fee question to ask in the first place.

Missouri's poverty waiver, RSMo 514.040, does not write a specific income or asset test into the statute the way Florida's 200%-of-poverty-guidelines rule does — it is left to a judge's own satisfaction that you are a poor person unable to pay. It also lets a qualifying legal aid organization certify indigency on its own, without a judge's sign-off, which neither Georgia's nor Florida's statute does. We could not confirm a single statewide printed waiver form the way Florida has one; ask the clerk what that county's court uses.

Common questions