Hi everybody. Today what we're talking about is how you figure out the filing fee you have to
pay when you go to court in California. A little known fact is that when you actually go to court
in California, either to sue somebody or, you know, if you've been unfortunate enough to be sued, then
you actually have to pay a fee. A lot of people don't, don't quite understand that. They think
that "Ok, you know, it's, you know, it's the courts. I pay taxes, you know, it should be covered." It's
not. The fee that you have to pay can be quite substantial. Eight hundred dollars, for example, or
it could be quite small, maybe thirty, forty dollars, but unless you qualify for a fee waiver, then you
are going to need to pay that fee before, you know, the court will actually do anything for you.
So I have a separate video on how to fill out a fee waiver, how to figure out whether or not
you qualify for a fee waiver. I'm gonna link it right over here, so if you haven't seen that video
already, go ahead and take a look, but to actually figure out how much of a filing fee you have
to pay, it's actually pretty simple, but you are going to need to hop online so why don't you go
ahead and do that right now and I will show you how to do it. Ok everybody so the first step that
you want to take is basically get online and open up a search engine. So here I've opened up Firefox
and I've gone to Google. Regardless of whether or not you use Google or Bing or Firefox or Chrome
or whatever, you have to go to a search engine and search for this: "california court fee schedule" Now
if you use google, google will suggest a bunch of other things, so, for example, the years 2013, 2012,
etc. Right now, go ahead and ignore that and just search for "california court fee schedule." What
you get back should be this sort of series of hits. So this first one is the one that we're actually
going to use. It's from the court's, like the overall court's website. It's www.courts.ca.gov forward slash
documents forward slash filing fees. So let's go ahead and open that in a new tab in the background.
These other hits, for example, they're going to be from websites for the superior courts in
individual counties. The information is going to be the same, like this fee schedule is going to be the
same as this one, except this one is going to be hosted by, you know, an individual county's website
instead of the overall court system's website. So this first one, for example, is LA Superior Court,
Los Angeles County. This one is Orange County, down in Southern California also so County of Orange.
This one is the County of San Francisco. This one's Santa Clara County Superior Court, where I am. So
again, all of these fee schedules are going to have the same information in it, but let's go ahead and
use this one because this one's actually put out by the overall kind of state court system versus
an individual county's court. So if you open it up, this is what the document looks like. It's actually
quite long. As you can kind of tell up here, it's 15 pages so it goes over quite a few things as
you can probably tell. So that's the good news. I mean this document is very comprehensive, however,
the bad news is that if you're, like if this is your first time looking at a document like this, it
can be quite confusing because you're not quite sure which kind of page or which line item your
situation kind of falls in. So if you are, you know, being assisted by somebody, like you have a friend,
neighbor, you know, family member, lawyer, whoever helping you, best to sit down with them and kind
of go through this fee schedule to find out what applies in your case. And if you're looking at, you
know, this video, you know, a couple years from now, a couple months from now, make sure that you check
the effective date of the fee schedule also. This schedule is updated periodically. This particular
one right now is effective June 27, 2012. So I'm going to try to give you a quick rundown of all
the different types of cases that are covered in this fee schedule and hopefully your situation
falls into the ones, or under some of the ones that I'm going to describe. So this first category
is unlimited civil case and that basically is a case where the amount in dispute, the
money amount is more than $25,000, and the filing fee to initiate a case like that
is $435. This $435 figure actually pops up quite a bit, so you'll see it again on, you know,
subsequent pages. So if you want to look up the actual statute section that fixes this $435
fee, you can look it up. It's -- GC is Government Code -- so Government Code 70611. The second type of case
is a limited civil case versus an unlimited one. So for limited civil cases they're actually two kinds.
The first kind is where the amount in dispute is over $10,000, but up to $25,000. So remember
unlimited is 25 and over. Limited is 10,000 to 25,000 and the fee for that is $370 and the second
type of limited civil case is where the amount in dispute is up to 10 right here. So up to 10 and the
fee for that is $225. So as your case involves more and more money in dispute, the filing fee will
increase. Let's see, what else? As you can see, general civil litigation there's a bunch of fees for
different things. The one thing that I deal with fairly often that is actually free is this. So it's
a basically, a domestic violence restraining order. So let's say that your husband, your boyfriend,
whoever is abusing you, you can get one of these to basically get out of that relationship, get out
of that household and be protected, and there's no fee for that. If you are someone who's been
accused of domestic violence, to file a response, to kind of deny the charges, defend yourself and stuff,
there's no fee to file that document. If you want to move for summary judgment, for example, there's
a fee for that $500. If you're a lawyer and you want to appear Pro Hac Vice, that's $500. If you have
a jury trial, there's an advance fee that you have to pay, that's $150 as well as a daily fee
that you have to pay and that's set by the judge in your particular case. If you are doing a lot of
judgment work like I do, to renew a judgment in California is $30. To issue documents
like abstracts of judgments, orders of sale, it's around twenty-five thirty dollars-ish.
For small claims stuff, I actually get this question a lot. In California, they charge you
filing fees in small claims court depending on how much is actually in dispute in your case. So
if you're suing for $1,500 or less, then the filing fee is $30. If
you're suing for 15, more than $1,500 but less than $5,000, then it's $50. $5,000 to $10,000, then the filing fee
is $75. For family law fees for divorce, for example, to start a divorce $435. To respond to a divorce
is also $435. A lot of people are actually surprised by this, like they kind of think "Okay, you know, if your
spouse, you know, leaves you, moves in with somebody else, and files for divorce, that's actually like
not really fair to you, likem you knowm you've been blindsided by this. The state of California does
not care. They make you pay a fee to respond to a divorce anyway and if you have like a house
or, you know, stock or bank accounts or something or children and your spousal support or child
support is going to be an issue in your case, then you have to pay a fee basically to participate
in the divorce, like you can't not participate. What else? A lot of family stuff. Probate fees and
to initiate a probate case is $435. Of the probates that I've done, there's always inevitably somebody
who objects. So, you know, all these fees, I mean there's a tremendous amount of, you know, things
that probate cases will charge you for. So this I can definitely kind of sympathize with, I guess, if
you're going through a probate yourself. To appeal a case in California to a Court of Appeal, there's
a fee of $775. Here, for example, there's a bunch of fees related to processing of paperwork.
So if you want something certified by the court, there's a fee of $25. If you want
a copy of anything made, its $0.50. These actually are not so bad. Um, yeah. So the thing is, I mean the
fees are actually relatively small. It's the earlier ones where you actually have to file
papers in a case that actually kind of give you kind of, you know, sticker shock, I guess.
Here you have a bunch of returned check fees. If you don't, you know, if you don't bounce checks
then, you know, you really shouldn't have to worry about these fees. So that said, the general idea
you would sort of imagine is that regardless of where you live in California, the filing fee you
should pay is the same, like you shouldn't have, you know, more access to courts in one county
versus another. That is true generally, however, there's an exception and it has to do with
court house construction surcharges. So in certain counties Riverside, for example, San Bernardino for
example, and San Francisco, there are small fees like, you know, $50, $35, etc.,
that are added on to a particular filing fee in order to kind of fund courthouse instruction, or
construction, earthquake retrofit, stuff like that. So I hope that was helpful. That was a
really quick overview of the fee schedule. If you have any kind of problems, I guess, sit down, read
this over. Almost certainly the fee that you have to pay is going to be in here somewhere, but
if you want to get in contact with me go online it's andychenlaw.com. If you like the video, go
ahead and give it a thumbs up and subscribe if you wouldn't mind and I will talk to you later. Thanks.