What the Clerk of the General District 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 City of Norfolk. The figures set by state statute are verified and apply here. A dash means we have not yet read this city’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 | — | Virginia General District Court does not hold jury trials in civil cases, including evictions, so there is no jury demand fee to pay there. A jury is only available after an appeal to Circuit Court. |
| Jury demand — 6 jurors | — | No separate six-juror figure — General District Court does not hold jury trials of any size. |
| Jury demand — small claims | — | No jury trials in the small claims division either. Small claims cases are heard by the same judge-only General District Court. |
| Mediation fee | — | |
| E-filing surcharge | — | There is no e-filing surcharge because there is no e-filing option for General District Court civil cases at all. Virginia's statewide e-filing system is built for Circuit Court and restricted to Virginia State Bar members. |
The filing fee is not the whole bill. Somebody has to serve the defendant, and in Virginia the sheriff sets that price county by county — it is the most variable number on this page. Sheriff service of an unlawful detainer summons is a flat $12.00 per defendant in every Virginia court, and executing the writ of possession afterward is a flat $25.00 (plus $12.00 for each additional defendant), both set by the statewide sheriff's fee statute rather than by the county or city.
$12.00 per defendant to serve an unlawful detainer summons or other civil process, set by Va. Code § 17.1-272 and identical in every Virginia county and city.
$25.00 for the sheriff to serve and execute a writ of possession after judgment, plus $12.00 for each additional defendant. Also statutory and uniform statewide.
Virginia courts will waive court fees, costs, and charges for people below certain income levels, under Va. Code § 17.1-606 and Va. Code § 16.1-69.48:4. There is one statewide form — you do not need a City of Norfolk version of it.
| The court waives | If your available income is |
|---|---|
| Full | You are presumed unable to pay if you currently receive a state or federal public-assistance benefit for the indigent, or are represented by a legal aid society. Otherwise the court adds your net income and liquid assets, subtracts documented exceptional expenses like medical care or child care, and if what is left is at or below 125% of the federal poverty guidelines for your household size, you are presumed unable to pay. Either way, the result is the same: the court lets you sue or defend without paying fees or costs. |
Virginia is all-or-nothing, like Georgia and Florida, not graduated by income band the way some states are. You either meet the poverty test in Va. Code § 17.1-606, in which case every fee and cost is waived, or you do not, in which case you pay in full. The 125%-of-poverty-line threshold is a specific, documented test rather than a judge's open-ended discretion, which is a bit more structure than Georgia's plain poverty affidavit.
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.
City of Norfolk Circuit Court
Clerk of the General District Court
No clerk website found. Contact the county courthouse directly.
None for General District Court civil cases
Virginia's statewide e-filing system, the Virginia Judiciary E-Filing System (VJEFS), covers most civil cases in Circuit Court and is built for Virginia State Bar members. It does not extend to General District Court, which is where unlawful detainer and small claims cases are filed. An eviction or small claims case is filed on paper at the clerk's counter, whether you are a landlord, a tenant, or a lawyer for either one. 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.
Virginia is not Georgia and it is not quite Florida either. The base civil filing fee for an unlawful detainer, warrant in debt, or small claims case is set by state statute (Va. Code § 16.1-69.48:2) at a flat $36, and every General District Court uses the same statewide calculator to price a filing. But the total a court actually charges is higher than $36 everywhere, and it is not identical everywhere. We ran the state's own official fee calculator, https://www.vacourts.gov/gdfees_calc_app, for an unlawful detainer with a claim between $500.01 and $50,000 and no sheriff service, in eight courts spanning large and small, urban and rural, counties and independent cities: Lee County ($46.00), Fairfax County ($52.00), Richmond City ($52.00), Virginia Beach ($52.00), Buchanan County ($52.00), Norfolk ($53.00), Wise County ($53.00), and Alexandria ($55.00). The filing fee varies by locality, but only within a narrow band, roughly $46 to $55, nothing like the $47-to-$120 spread we found in Georgia. Sheriff service, when you ask the court to arrange it, adds a further $12.00 per defendant on top of any of those totals, and that figure is fixed by statute and identical everywhere.
There is no single statewide dollar table we can publish the way Florida's is. Virginia's base filing fee is set by statute, and the courts' own online calculator is authoritative for what a filer actually pays, but that calculator returns a different total for the same case depending on which court you pick, so it is a lookup tool rather than a fixed schedule.
Statutory backbone: Va. Code § 16.1-69.48:2 — District court civil case fees. Va. Code § 16.1-69.48:2, as most recently amended. Section 16.1-69.48:2 sets one flat fee, $36.00, for "each distress, detinue, interrogatory summons, unlawful detainer, civil warrant, notice of motion, garnishment, attachment issued, or other civil proceeding," with $10.00 of that fee earmarked for the Courts Technology Fund. Separately, Va. Code § 17.1-281 lets a county or city's governing body add a local courthouse construction and maintenance fee of up to $2.00 (and, where the locality has qualifying courthouse-security compliance costs, up to $3.00) to each civil case, but only to cases in the higher of the calculator's two claim brackets (over $500). We confirmed that split directly: in Alexandria, an unlawful detainer with a claim of $500 or less totals $52.00, while the identical case with a claim over $500 totals $55.00, a $3.00 difference. Fairfax County shows no such split ($52.00 either way), meaning Fairfax has not adopted the local add-on, or has folded it into a $0 rate. Stacking the $36 base fee and even the full $2-3 local add-on together does not reach the $46-to-$55 total the calculator actually returns, so there is a further gap we could not source to a specific code section; see the open question below. 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.