What the Circuit Court Clerk (in most counties the Circuit Court Clerk also serves as the General Sessions Court Clerk; a few of the largest counties elect a separate General Sessions Court Clerk) 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 Davidson 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 | — | |
| Appearance fee — small claims defendant | — | |
| Jury demand — 12 jurors | — | There is no jury trial, and so no jury demand fee, in Tennessee general sessions court. A party who wants a jury must appeal to circuit court for a trial de novo, which is a different filing with its own separate cost. |
| Jury demand — 6 jurors | — | Same as the twelve-person figure: no jury sits in general sessions court, so there is no six-person jury fee either. |
| Jury demand — small claims | — | Tennessee does not have a separate small claims court or jury procedure. Every general sessions civil case, including one that would be called small claims elsewhere, is tried by the judge without a jury unless it is appealed to circuit court. |
| Mediation fee | — | |
| E-filing surcharge | — |
The filing fee is not the whole bill. Somebody has to serve the defendant, and in Tennessee the sheriff sets that price county by county — it is the most variable number on this page. The Sheriff's fee for personal service of a detainer warrant was $52.00 per defendant in every one of the four counties we could confirm (Anderson, Montgomery, Davidson, Hamilton), just above the $50.00 statutory base in Tenn. Code Ann. § 8-21-901. Executing the writ of possession afterward came to $77.00 in the counties that itemized it (Davidson, Hamilton), split between a $25.00 clerk fee and the same $52.00 sheriff fee.
$52.00 per defendant to have the Sheriff personally serve a detainer warrant, confirmed identically on Anderson, Montgomery, Davidson, and Hamilton counties' own fee schedules. Tenn. Code Ann. § 8-21-901 sets the base statutory service fee at $50.00; every county we checked billed $52.00, and we could not find the extra $2.00 itemized on any single page, so we show the confirmed $52.00 rather than the bare statutory figure.
$77.00 to execute the writ of possession and put the tenant out after judgment, confirmed on Davidson and Hamilton counties' own schedules and consistent with Anderson's per-defendant formula. It splits into a $25.00 clerk fee plus the same $52.00 sheriff fee charged for the original service.
Tennessee courts will waive court fees, costs, and charges for people below certain income levels, under Tenn. Code Ann. § 20-12-127 and Tenn. Code Ann. § 20-12-127(a)(2). Tennessee has no single statewide form: the Circuit Court Clerk (in most counties the Circuit Court Clerk also serves as the General Sessions Court Clerk; a few of the largest counties elect a separate General Sessions Court Clerk) hands you the court's own affidavit when you ask.
| The court waives | If your available income is |
|---|---|
| Full | You sign a sworn statement that, owing to your poverty, you cannot bear the expense of the case and believe you are entitled to the relief you are seeking, plus a supporting affidavit of indigency. Filing this way does not erase the debt; Tenn. Code Ann. § 20-12-127(b) says it only suspends collection of costs until the court taxes them, and § 20-12-132 through § 20-12-134 let a court dismiss a pauper's case or later enter judgment for costs against a pauper who loses or is found not to have been indigent. |
Like Georgia and Florida, Tennessee's pauper's oath is all-or-nothing rather than graduated by income band: you either sign the oath and affidavit and proceed without paying up front, or you pay the full fee. There is no partial or sliding-scale discount in the statute we read.
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.
Davidson County Circuit Court
Circuit Court Clerk (in most counties the Circuit Court Clerk also serves as the General Sessions Court Clerk; a few of the largest counties elect a separate General Sessions Court Clerk)
No clerk website found. Contact the county courthouse directly.
None statewide
We found no statewide e-filing portal for General Sessions civil cases comparable to Georgia's PeachCourt or Florida's myflcourtaccess.com. Davidson County's Circuit Court Clerk posts civil dockets online and offers case lookup, but nothing we found requires a self-represented landlord or tenant to file electronically rather than on paper at the clerk's counter. If individual counties run their own e-filing systems, we have not been able to confirm that from an official page for this record. 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.
Tennessee behaves like Georgia, not Florida: the detainer warrant filing fee is not one number statewide, even though a real statute sets a statewide base. Tenn. Code Ann. § 8-21-401 fixes the general sessions civil filing fee at $42.00 and a separate state litigation tax statute, § 67-4-602, adds $17.75 or $23.75 plus $1.00 depending on the court's jurisdiction, but a third statute, § 67-4-601, then lets each county's legislative body add its own local litigation tax on top, in amounts that differ county by county, mostly written into the code as population brackets rather than county names. The result, confirmed on four counties' own clerk fee schedules, is a real spread: Davidson County (Nashville) charges $145.75 for a Detainer Warrant, Montgomery County (Clarksville) $148.50, Anderson County $132.75 if you arrange your own process server or $184.75 if the Sheriff serves it, and Hamilton County (Chattanooga) $271.25 with sheriff service built in. We could not reach Shelby County's (Memphis) own site to confirm its figure, and several other counties we tried either block automated access to their fee pages or post the schedule as an unreadable scanned PDF, so this range should be read as a floor and not a ceiling.
Tennessee publishes no single statewide general sessions filing-fee schedule the way Florida does. Each county's Circuit Court Clerk (or, in a few counties, a separate General Sessions Court Clerk) posts its own cost sheet, typically as a one-page PDF, usually citing Tenn. Code Ann. § 8-21-401 as its authority even though the total on the page is higher than that statute's own $42.00 figure once litigation taxes are folded in.
Statutory backbone: Tenn. Code Ann. § 29-18-101 et seq.; § 8-21-401; § 67-4-601; § 67-4-602 — Forcible Entry and Detainer; Court Clerk Fees; Litigation Taxes. Tenn. Code Ann. § 29-18-122 sets an obsolete $1.00-per-day judge's fee and a $2.50-per-defendant officer's fee dating to Acts 1849-1850; the fee actually charged today comes from the general clerk-fee statute, § 8-21-401, and the litigation tax statutes, § 67-4-601 and § 67-4-602, not from Title 29 itself.. § 8-21-401 sets a flat $42.00 "general sessions civil filing fee" for civil cases in general sessions court generally, with no separate, higher line for detainer warrants. § 67-4-602 adds a state privilege tax on litigation of $17.75 in general sessions civil cases not exercising "state court jurisdiction," or $23.75 plus an additional $1.00 (a combined $24.75) when the general sessions court is exercising state court jurisdiction. § 67-4-601 then authorizes counties, mostly by population bracket, to add a local litigation tax of up to $10.00, $25.00, $50.00, or $100.00 per case depending on the bracket and the purpose (jail and courthouse construction, courthouse security, technology, and similar). None of the four totals we found on county pages ($145.75, $148.50, $184.75, $271.25) equals $42.00 plus either state tax figure exactly, which means the county totals are also picking up local litigation taxes and clerk surcharges we could not itemize one by one from a single page. 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.