What the Clerk of Superior Court 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.
This is a floor, not a total. It adds up only the components this county actually publishes — the missing pieces below will push it higher. 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 Lincoln 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 | $96 | North Carolina sets this by statute, not by county. The $96.00 covers a small-claims complaint whether it asks for possession alone or for possession plus unpaid rent, because state law treats both as parts of the same small claim action. Every county we checked charges exactly this. |
| Eviction filing — possession only | $96 | North Carolina does not charge less for a possession-only summary ejectment. The filing fee is the same $96.00 whether or not the landlord also claims unpaid rent. |
| Appearance fee — eviction defendant | — | |
| Appearance fee — small claims defendant | — | |
| Jury demand — 12 jurors | — | There is no jury at the small-claims stage in North Carolina, so there is no fee to demand one there. A jury is only available after an appeal to District Court, and that costs an appeal fee rather than a separate jury fee. |
| Jury demand — 6 jurors | — | No separate six-person jury figure — there is no jury demand fee at the small-claims stage in North Carolina. |
| Jury demand — small claims | — | No fee to demand a jury in North Carolina small claims, because small claims cases are tried by a magistrate without a jury in the first place. |
| Mediation fee | — | |
| E-filing surcharge | — |
The filing fee is not the whole bill. Somebody has to serve the defendant, and in North Carolina the sheriff sets that price county by county — it is the most variable number on this page. Sheriff service of the eviction summons is a flat $30.00 per person in every county we checked, set by state statute rather than by the county. Executing the writ of possession afterward is not a fixed statutory figure — the Sheriff may charge 'all necessary expenses,' and we did not find a published flat rate for it on any official page.
$30.00 per person served, set by N.C. Gen. Stat. 7A-311 and identical in every North Carolina county. Paid to the Sheriff's office separately from the $96.00 filing fee paid to the clerk.
There is no statewide dollar figure for physically carrying out a writ of possession. The statute entitles the Sheriff to charge 'all necessary expenses' of the removal on top of the $30.00 service fee, but sets no fixed amount, and we found no county that publishes one — call the Sheriff's civil-process office where the property sits before you budget for a lockout.
North Carolina courts will waive court fees, costs, and charges for people below certain income levels, under N.C. Gen. Stat. § 1-110 and N.C. Gen. Stat. § 1-110. There is one statewide form — you do not need a Lincoln County version of it.
| The court waives | If your available income is |
|---|---|
| Full | Automatic if you currently receive SNAP, TANF or SSI, or are represented by Legal Aid of North Carolina or a qualifying pro bono attorney. Otherwise you complete AOC-G-106 and the clerk weighs your income and expenses against your ability to pay. |
Like Georgia and Florida, North Carolina is all-or-nothing rather than graduated: the clerk either grants the petition and the filing fee, service fee and other advance costs are waived in full, or denies it and you pay in full. There is no partial or sliding-scale reduction. A party who disagrees with the clerk's decision can ask a judge to review it.
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.
Lincoln County Circuit Court
Clerk of Superior Court
No clerk website found. Contact the county courthouse directly.
File & Serve (Enterprise Justice / Odyssey)
North Carolina finished converting all 100 counties to the statewide Odyssey case management system on October 13, 2025. Electronic filing through File & Serve is mandatory for attorneys once a county has converted, but a self-represented landlord or tenant may still choose to file on paper at the clerk's counter, 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.
North Carolina behaves like Florida, not Georgia: the filing fee is set once by the legislature and does not change from county to county. We checked the small-claims/summary-ejectment filing fee against Durham, Dare, and Wake counties' own clerk or sheriff pages, against the North Carolina Bar Association's statewide filing guide, against Legal Aid of North Carolina's statewide small-claims guide, and against the Administrative Office of the Courts' own statewide court-costs chart — all six list exactly $96.00, with no exceptions. The Sheriff's fee to serve the papers is likewise a single statewide number, $30.00 per person, confirmed in the same sources plus Wake County's own civil-process page. What is not fixed by statute is the cost to actually carry out a writ of possession and remove a tenant after judgment — the law only says the Sheriff may charge 'all necessary expenses' for that, so that figure is left to each Sheriff's office rather than published as one number.
This is one statewide statutory table, not a county-by-county schedule. We show it here, the way we did for Florida, because North Carolina has a real one: every county clerk's fee information we checked reprints this same $96.00 rather than setting its own rate.
Statutory backbone: N.C. Gen. Stat. § 7A-305(a); § 7A-311 — Costs in civil actions (magistrate-court fees); sheriff's fees for service of civil process. N.C. Gen. Stat. § 7A-305, as most recently amended; the current $96.00 magistrate-court total is reflected in the Administrative Office of the Courts' Court Costs and Fees Chart effective January 1, 2025. The $96.00 a filer pays is three add-ons stacked by statute, not one line item: an $80.00 General Court of Justice support fee, a $12.00 facilities fee, and a $4.00 telecommunications and data-connectivity fee. $80 + $12 + $4 = $96, and that is the figure every clerk's office we checked charges for a small-claims complaint, including summary ejectment, filed before a magistrate. Unlike Georgia's $15 indigent-defense add-on or Ohio's $26 legal-aid fee, North Carolina does not layer a separate statewide surcharge on top of this total — it is already baked in. 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.