Tools · Small Claims
Tennessee Small Claims Checker (2026)
Enter your claim amount to see whether it fits under the Tennessee small claims limit ($25,000), with the filing fee and whether a lawyer is allowed at the hearing.
Tennessee small claims checker
The dollar amount you would ask the court for: the deposit, the unpaid bill, the repair cost. Interest and court costs usually sit on top of the limit, not inside it.
Enter your claim amount above to see it compared against the Tennessee figures.
Where and how to file is procedure this page does not walk through; the official self-help resource is Tennessee Administrative Office of the Courts (Self-Help Center). If your claim is a security deposit a landlord kept, the security deposit calculator shows the cap and the return deadline that apply to it.
- Your claim amount
- Not entered
- Tennessee small claims limit
- $25,000
- Filing fee
- ~$120–$250 total (about $42 statutory base plus county costs and service)
- Lawyers at the hearing
- Allowed
Plain-language summary, not legal advice.
Informational only, not legal advice, and not a prediction that any claim would succeed. Limits change and some states carve out claim types this summary cannot weigh. See the full rule and the citations on the Tennessee small claims reference, cited to Tenn. Code §16-15-501.
How the Tennessee small claims limit works
Tennessee is a special case, and answering "what's the small claims limit?" honestly means explaining a court, not just a number. There is no separate small claims court here. The general sessions court, often called "the people's court," handles these cases, and §16-15-501 sets its civil jurisdiction at $25,000, the highest such ceiling in the country. But the statute carves out two situations with no dollar limit at all: eviction cases (forcible entry and detainer) and actions to recover personal property both carry "unlimited original jurisdiction," including the power to award an alternative money judgment. So the $25,000 figure governs ordinary money claims, while a suit to get your property back is not capped. We confirmed the $25,000 limit and both unlimited-jurisdiction carve-outs against the official University of Tennessee county government reference, which tracks §16-15-501. One caution: four urban counties (Anderson, Davidson, Hamilton, and Knox) are widely reported to cap general sessions civil cases at $15,000, so confirm the ceiling with the clerk if your case sits in one of them. Lawyers are allowed on either side.
This checker compares your number to the Tennessee ceiling; it is informational only and not legal advice, and it says nothing about whether a claim would succeed. For where to file and what the hearing looks like, use the official self-help resource linked in the result. The full rule and the citations are on the Tennessee small claims reference.
Small claims checkers for other states
Same tool, each with its own ceiling and fee.