What the Circuit Clerk (Associate Civil / Small Claims Division) 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.
Everything the clerk charges on an eviction or small claims case in Carter 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 | — | |
| Eviction filing — possession only | — | |
| Appearance fee — eviction defendant | — | We found no statute creating a separate fee to file an appearance or answer in a Missouri rent-and-possession or unlawful detainer case. |
| Appearance fee — small claims defendant | — | Same finding as the eviction appearance fee: no separate statutory fee to appear or answer in Missouri small claims court. |
| Jury demand — 12 jurors | — | Missouri does not charge anything to demand a twelve-person jury in a rent-and-possession case — you just have to file a timely written demand. |
| Jury demand — 6 jurors | — | If every party agrees, the jury can be as small as six instead of twelve, but that agreement does not come with a fee either. |
| Jury demand — small claims | — | There is no jury option in Missouri small claims court at any price — the statute requires trial to the judge alone. |
| Mediation fee | — | We found no statewide statutory mediation fee for a Missouri rent-and-possession or small claims case. |
| E-filing surcharge | — | We found no separate charge for filing electronically instead of on paper. The statewide court automation fund fee in RSMo 488.027 applies to a civil case regardless of how it is filed. |
The filing fee is not the whole bill. Somebody has to serve the defendant, and in Missouri the sheriff sets that price county by county — it is the most variable number on this page. We could only confirm one county's actual charge, and it does not match the statutory formula cleanly: Jackson County bills a flat $46.00 per defendant for its civil-process deputies, while RSMo 57.280's own formula — a $20 base charge, a $15 or $20 county-classification add-on, and up to $50 more for an eviction specifically — could add up to $85 to $90 if a county charged the maximum at every step. Buchanan County's schedule does not print a number at all and tells the filer to call the sheriff.
Missouri courts will waive court fees, costs, and charges for people below certain income levels, under RSMo 514.040 and RSMo 514.040. Missouri has no single statewide form: the Circuit Clerk (Associate Civil / Small Claims Division) hands you the court's own affidavit when you ask.
| The court waives | If your available income is |
|---|---|
| Full | The judge must be satisfied you are a poor person unable to pay the costs of your case. The statute does not write in a specific income test or percentage-of-poverty-line threshold the way Florida's does — it is left to the judge's own determination, or to a qualifying legal aid organization's certification. |
Like Georgia and Florida, Missouri is all-or-nothing rather than graduated by income band — you either qualify for a full waiver of costs or you pay in full. What is different is that Missouri's statute does not spell out an income or asset test at all, so a judge has real discretion in deciding who is a "poor person," and separately, a qualifying legal aid organization can waive costs on its own certification without asking a judge first.
Fee waiver information verified August 1, 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.
Carter County Circuit Court
Circuit Clerk (Associate Civil / Small Claims Division)
No clerk website found. Contact the county courthouse directly.
Missouri eFiling System (Case.net)
Missouri's statewide electronic filing system requires attorneys to file electronically in most civil cases, but a self-represented tenant or landlord is not required to use it and can file a rent-and-possession or small claims case on paper at the clerk's counter. We could not pull the current text of the court rule that says so directly this round, so treat the mandatory/optional split as our best understanding rather than a confirmed reading, and confirm with the clerk before assuming paper filing is available in a specific county. 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.
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.
There is no statewide dollar table in the Missouri Revised Statutes for rent-and-possession or small claims filing fees, and we could not find one published by the Missouri courts either. Each circuit appears to set and publish its own schedule, the way Georgia's magistrate courts do, rather than everyone pointing back to one number set in Jefferson City.
Statutory backbone: RSMo 483.530; 488.010–488.020; 488.027 — Clerk's duty to collect costs in the amounts set under sections 488.010 to 488.020; statewide court automation fund fee. RSMo 483.530, effective July 1, 1997, tells the clerk to charge whatever amount sections 488.010 to 488.020 set. Those sections, in turn, only define terms ("court costs," "fees," "surcharges") and set the timing and enforcement of collection — neither one, nor 488.027's automation-fund fee, states an actual dollar figure for a rent-and-possession or small claims filing.. Unlike Georgia's $22 statutory cap or Florida's $180 base fee, Missouri's core filing-fee statute is silent on amount by design, and the number a filer actually pays traces to a local court's own administrative order rather than to any figure printed in the Missouri Revised Statutes. The one dollar figure that is written directly into a statute and applies to every civil case in the state is a small one: RSMo 488.315 adds a flat $3.50 juvenile justice preservation fund surcharge to "all civil actions filed in the state," which Jackson County's own schedule lists separately and dates to 2018. Statute text checked August 1, 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.