Small Claims Court in Ontario: every step from filing to getting paid

Someone owes you money and will not pay. A contractor took a deposit and stopped answering, a client is nine months late on an invoice, a former tenant left the place wrecked. Small Claims Court was built for this, and since October 1, 2025 it hears claims up to $50,000. You do not need a lawyer, and plenty of people should not hire one. What you need is the sequence, because the steps people skip early are the ones that cost the most later.

Section 22(1) of the Courts of Justice Act continues Small Claims Court as a branch of the Superior Court of Justice. Most sittings are run by deputy judges, lawyers appointed to the role under section 32. Section 25 tells the court to decide matters "in a summary way", which is why these files move in months where the Superior Court takes years.

Section 23(1) sets the boundary: orders for the payment of money, or for the return of personal property, up to a prescribed amount, exclusive of interest and costs. That amount lives in O. Reg. 626/00↗, and O. Reg. 42/25 raised it from $35,000 to $50,000 effective October 1, 2025. The same amendment moved the appeal limit, so under section 31 a final order now has to exceed $5,000 before the Divisional Court will hear an appeal from it. At or below that figure, the trial judgment is the whole of your case. Because the limit excludes interest, our court interest calculator can show you what the interest adds without it pushing the claim out of this court.

No injunctions, no declarations, no deciding who owns land, and rule 6.02 stops you from splitting one cause of action in two to fit under the ceiling. If you are owed $68,000 you choose between the Superior Court and giving up $18,000 to stay here. The choice runs one way only: since July 1, 2024, section 23(1.1) has barred starting a Small Claims sized action upstairs without leave.

Rule 6.01(1) says where to file. The territorial division where the cause of action arose, the one where a defendant lives or carries on business, or the court sitting nearest to a defendant. Addresses are in Ontario's courthouse directory↗. Filing in the wrong division does not fail quietly: under rule 6.01(3) a judge can order the case tried somewhere else, months in.

The action starts with a plaintiff's claim, Form 7A, under rule 7.01. Forms are free on the Ontario Court Forms site↗, and most Small Claims documents can be filed online↗ instead of at the counter. Rule 7.01(2) wants the parties' full names, the date, place and nature of the events, the amount you want, the address where you believe the defendant can be served, and a copy of any document the claim rests on attached to every copy.

Name the defendant correctly. A numbered company behind a storefront name gets sued in its legal name. A sole proprietor can be sued in the business name under rule 5.06. Suing the wrong entity is the most common way a plaintiff wins and collects nothing.

Filing fees come from O. Reg. 332/16↗, are identical across Ontario, and hold until January 1, 2027, when section 4 starts indexing them to inflation.

• Filing a claim: $108, or $228 for a frequent claimant, meaning 10 or more claims at the same court office that calendar year.
• Filing a defence: $77. Requesting default judgment: $94, or $128 for a frequent claimant.
• Fixing a trial or assessment hearing date: $308, or $403 for a frequent claimant.
• Notice of motion: $127.

Ontario waives court fees↗ for low-income litigants. Check your deadline before anything else, though. Section 4 of the Limitations Act, 2002 gives you two years from the day you knew, or reasonably should have known, that you had a claim, which on an unpaid invoice usually runs from the day payment was due.

The clerk issues the claim. Serving it is your job. Rule 8.01(1) requires personal service under rule 8.02. If you try that at someone's home and cannot manage it, rule 8.03(2) lets you leave a sealed copy with an adult member of the household and mail or courier a second copy that day or the next. Then file an affidavit of service, Form 8A. Rule 8.01(2) gives you six months from issue, extendable if you ask, and rule 8.04 allows substituted service on a defendant who is dodging you. Absent special circumstances, rule 19.01(3) caps the recoverable service disbursement at $60 per person, and process servers charge more.

Rule 9.01 gives a served defendant 20 days to serve a defence, Form 9A, and file it with proof of service. A defendant who admits the debt but cannot pay at once can propose terms of payment under rule 9.03, and if you do not dispute that proposal within 20 days on Form 9B, it binds them as though a judge had ordered it.

If nothing arrives, rule 11.01 lets you ask the clerk to note the defendant in default. For a debt or a liquidated demand, rule 11.02 has the clerk sign default judgment, Form 11B, with no hearing and no judge. For unliquidated damages, rule 11.03 still makes you prove the amount, on a motion in writing or at an assessment hearing. A defendant who was never properly served can have the whole thing set aside, which is one more reason to serve carefully rather than cheaply.

Rule 13.01 requires a settlement conference in every defended action, held within 90 days after the first defence is filed. A judge or a referee runs it, what is said there stays confidential under rule 13.03(4), and under rule 13.08 that judge will not preside at your trial. Most defended files end at or shortly after this conference.

Rule 13.03(2) is the part people miss. At least 14 days beforehand you have to serve on every other party, and file with the court, every document you intend to rely on at trial that is not already attached to a claim or defence, plus a list of proposed witnesses in Form 13A. Rule 13.02(7) lets the court order costs against a party who fails to file that material, or who arrives so unprepared as to frustrate the conference.

How to prepare for it

1. 01Build one paginated document brief. Contract, invoices, payment records, photographs and the email thread in date order, with a copy for the judge and each party.
2. 02Write a one-page chronology. Dates on the left, events on the right, each line pointing to a page in the brief. Judges read it first.
3. 03Show the arithmetic behind your number. An unexplained round figure invites a discount.
4. 04Serve and file 14 days out. Late material can be excluded, and lateness spends credibility you will want later.
5. 05Fix your walk-away number in advance. If someone else has to approve a settlement, rule 13.02(2) requires telephone access to them throughout the conference.
6. 06Put a written offer to settle on the record. Served at least seven days before trial and never withdrawn, it triggers rule 14.07: match or beat your own offer at trial and the court may award up to twice the costs, disbursements aside.

Trials are not scheduled automatically. A party files a request to clerk, Form 9B, and pays the trial fee before the clerk fixes a date under rule 16.01, and the court can direct a trial management conference under rule 16.1.01 first.

The evidence rules are deliberately loose. Section 27 of the Courts of Justice Act lets the court admit any relevant testimony, document or thing whether or not another court would accept it, subject to privilege. Rule 18.02(1) goes further: anything served on every party at least 30 days before the trial date, including a signed witness statement or an expert's report, goes into evidence without the author attending, unless the trial judge orders otherwise. Serve the signed statement of the neighbour who watched the work and you may never need to bring them to court. Anyone who wants to cross-examine has to summons the author, Form 18A, at $33.

Timing, plainly. The 90-day rule for settlement conferences is a target, and the busier court offices miss it. A trial date lands some months after the conference again. Budget a year or more from filing to judgment if the case does not settle.

Section 29 of the Courts of Justice Act caps an award of costs, other than disbursements, at 15 per cent of the amount claimed, unless the court considers a penalty necessary for unreasonable behaviour. On a $20,000 claim that ceiling is $3,000, and awards routinely land below it.

• Disbursements: Rule 19.01(1) covers reasonable out-of-pocket costs, subject to the $60 service cap and a $200 cap on preparing a claim or defence under rule 19.01(4).
• Representation fee: Rule 19.04 allows a reasonable fee to a successful party who used a lawyer or paralegal at trial, inside the same ceiling.
• Self-represented parties: Rule 19.05 permits up to $500 for inconvenience and expense, rising to $1,500 where rule 14.07 is triggered.

Costs stay low by design, so that the risk of losing does not scare people out of filing. The consequence is that a represented party recovers well under what representation cost them.

Judgment gives you the right to collect. Collecting is a separate project with its own forms and fees, set out in Ontario's guide to procedures after judgment↗. Four of Rule 20's tools do most of the work.

• Examination in aid of execution: Rule 20.10, Form 20H, $68. Under oath, the debtor answers for their income, property, debts, what they did with their assets, and their means to pay, and an individual has to complete a financial information form, Form 20I. Do this one first. It tells you which of the rest is worth paying for.
• Garnishment: Rule 20.08, Form 20E, $144. It reaches money a third party owes your debtor, wages and bank balances included. Section 7(2) of the Wages Act exempts 80 per cent of wages, so a wage garnishment captures 20 per cent, and a judge can move that figure either way under subsections 7(4) and 7(5).
• Writ of seizure and sale of personal property: Rule 20.06, Form 20C, $68. A bailiff seizes and sells, charging $38 per attempt, or $64 where a sale is necessary, payable whether or not the attempt succeeds. The Execution Act exempts much of what an individual owns, so this one suits a business debtor better.
• Writ of seizure and sale of land: Rule 20.07, Form 20D, $68, issued to the sheriff for the county where the debtor owns property. Slow, and it rarely ends in a sale, but nothing can be sold or refinanced while the writ sits against title.

Two traps. Six years after the order, a writ or a notice of garnishment issues only with leave of the court, under rules 20.06(1.1), 20.07(1.1) and 20.08(2.1). And none of it produces a dollar from a debtor with no job, no bank account and no property, which is why collectability belongs at the front of the analysis, before you spend anything. A judgment against a corporation is worth whatever the corporation is worth, so read when a corporation's owner is personally on the hook before you sue an empty company.

Section 26 of the Courts of Justice Act lets you use a lawyer or a licensed paralegal, and the rules assume many parties will use neither. For a documented invoice against a solvent local defendant, running it yourself is usually right, and Ontario's guide to suing in Small Claims Court↗ walks the whole process. Spending $3,000 in fees to chase $6,000 is not a strategy. Representation earns its cost in a narrower set of cases:

• The claim sits near or above $50,000, so the choice between abandoning the excess and suing upstairs is worth real money.
• The other side is an insurer, a bank, or a corporation with in-house counsel.
• The case turns on contract wording or a point of law rather than on whose account a judge believes.
• Your damages are unliquidated and have to be built, priced and proven rather than read off an invoice.
• You have a judgment already and the debtor is moving assets or hiding behind an empty corporation.

Plenty of disputes land here that nobody files under the heading of small claims: a denied insurance payout under the limit, covered in what to do when an insurer denies your claim, or the handshake deals and unpaid invoices behind the legal mistakes new Ontario businesses make.

Most people who use this court should run their own case. Two moments are worth an hour of advice: before you file, when someone should tell you whether your defendant can actually pay, and after you win, when the judgment is sitting in a drawer doing nothing. Our civil litigation practice covers both halves, and Telesh Law Firm Professional Corp can tell you which of the two you are in.

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This article is general information, not legal advice, and does not create a solicitor-client relationship. It is current as at its publication date and is not revised as the law changes. For advice on your specific situation, book a consultation or call 416-639-0887.

Written by

Caleesis Telesh

Founder & Principal Lawyer

LL.B. · B.A., York University · Member, Law Society of Ontario

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