State Civil Courts & Frequently Referenced Landlord-Tenant Laws

State Civil Courts & Frequently Referenced Landlord-Tenant Laws
For All 50 States & DC
© 2011 Landlord.com

This chart is an attempt to gather, in one convenient place, the information you will need to refer to the basic landlord tenant laws of your state in preparation for disputes with your tenant or landlord, and to navigate your state’s civil court system , should a resort to it be necessary, self-help resources, if provided by the state courts and Small Claims Court descriptions and links for all 50 states. You will find in it the following resources.

Statutes : These are the statutes of your state that we have found bear most directly on the profession of landlording or being a tenant. They are the ones that you will most often, in our view, need to review on day to day questions, such as how much time you have to refund a moving tenant’s security deposit, who is responsible to foot the bill for repairs to damage done to the rental premises, or what you can do if rent is not paid on time.

Trial Courts : Not all courts are equal. That does not mean some are more important than others. It means that they all have different functions. The courts you will almost always have direct contact with are the trial courts. Trial courts are those that hear cases by listening to witnesses and the contentions of the parties and make decisions based on the information they receive and the manner in which the law bears on it. The trial courts’ work is divided according to how large the stakes in the dispute they must hear are. At the lowest level are the small claims or justice courts, and at the highest are the courts that can hear disputes of unlimited magnitude. We provide a portal to your state’s court structure so you can determine where your claim belongs. You will also find how to contact the court in your area that can hear your claim so you can obtain information on how, where, and when to make your filing. We do not include highly specialized courts, such as those dealing with juvenile offenders, divorce courts, tax courts, and the like, as these do not bear directly on landlord-tenant disputes.

Court Self Help Resources : We have found 47 states that provide substantial on line assistance to persons who want to make a claim on their own, without attorney assistance. These self help centers run from the elaborate, with provisions for electronic filing of complaints and other pleadings with detailed instructions, to the very simple, but one thing you can be sure of is that, because they are run or commissioned by the courts themselves, you will not be given any bum steers.

Small Claims Materials : Small claims court is the court you will most likely and most often have contact with. We have given them a separate column for this reason. In this column you will find court provided or sponsored information on how to file your claim if you are making one, or how to present your defense if you are being sued, how the system in your locality works, and a lot of the other details you will need to know to make your day in court as stress free as possible.