How to File in Travis County Justice Court for Disputes Up to $20,000
Texas raised the small claims ceiling to $20,000. Most guides still say $10,000. Here's a current, precinct-specific walkthrough for Austin homeowners facing incomplete pool, HVAC, roofing, and fou…
Texas raised the small claims ceiling to $20,000. Most guides still say $10,000. Here’s a current, precinct-specific walkthrough for Austin homeowners facing incomplete pool, HVAC, roofing, and foundation work this summer.
If your spring contractor took a deposit, stopped showing up, and stopped returning calls, you’re in good company this July. Austin’s construction season front-loads the pain. Work gets contracted in March and April, problems surface in June and July, and homeowners spend August trying to figure out what to do next. It’s a reliable enough pattern that JP court clerks probably start dreading June the way ER nurses dread full moons.
You can take a contractor to Justice of the Peace court in Travis County without a lawyer, and you can sue for up to $20,000. That ceiling matters because nearly every guide circulating online still quotes the old $10,000 limit. Texas raised the Justice Court jurisdictional cap in 2020. If your dispute falls below that threshold and involves money damages rather than a personal injury claim, JP court is built for exactly what you’re dealing with.
What follows is a precinct-specific walkthrough for Travis County residents — not a generic Texas overview, but something grounded in the actual courts, clerk offices, and constable procedures you’ll use here.
What JP Court Handles and What It Doesn’t
Justice of the Peace courts hear civil money disputes up to $20,000, not counting interest and costs. Contractor non-performance, defective work, security deposit fights, car repair overbilling — these belong here. The procedures are simplified, the rules of evidence are applied loosely, and judges expect most parties to show up without an attorney.
JP courts won’t hear personal injury claims regardless of dollar amount, legal malpractice, medical malpractice, or claims seeking only punitive damages. If your roofing contractor’s crew damaged your neighbor’s car and that’s your main claim, you’re in the wrong venue. If your HVAC installer did shoddy work and you want the $4,800 it’ll cost another company to fix it, you’re in exactly the right place.
Make one cost-benefit calculation before you file. Filing fees plus constable service in Travis County run roughly $150 to $200 total, depending on your precinct. For a dispute under $500, that’s a real percentage of the potential recovery, and the time investment is substantial on top of it. The courts offer fee waivers — ask the clerk for an Affidavit of Inability to Pay — but the time cost doesn’t waive with the fees.
Which Travis County Precinct Gets Your Case
Travis County has five Justice of the Peace precincts, and the geographic jurisdiction rule trips up a lot of filers. You don’t file where you live. You file in the precinct where the defendant lives or where the work was supposed to happen. If you live in Tarrytown but your contractor is based across the county and did the work at your address, your options are the precinct covering the defendant’s location or the work site — not the one covering your neighborhood.
When those two locations fall in different precincts, either is potentially valid. Most filers pick whichever is more convenient, but confirm your specific situation before filing anything.
Confirm current precinct addresses and geographic coverage at traviscountytx.gov/courts/jp before you go anywhere. Several precincts relocated after COVID, and addresses on third-party legal websites are outdated. Judge names change with elections too, so don’t rely on anything you read elsewhere — including older versions of guides like this one.
Precincts 1 and 5 carry heavier docket loads than the others, largely from landlord-tenant volume. If your dispute falls in one of those precincts, hearing dates will land toward the longer end of any estimate you’ve seen.
How to File: Forms, Fees, and the Clerk’s Window
Start at txcourts.gov, the Texas Office of Court Administration’s self-help site, where you’ll find the standardized small claims petition forms used statewide. Download and complete the petition before you go to the courthouse. The clerks can answer procedural questions but cannot help you fill out your paperwork — understand that distinction before you show up expecting a guided walkthrough.
When you get to the clerk’s window, bring your completed petition, the full legal name and address of the defendant, and your filing fee payment. Fees in Travis County scale with claim size. For claims under $10,000, petition filing runs roughly $54 to $79. For claims between $10,001 and $20,000, roughly $79 to $121. Constable service adds roughly $75 to $100 per defendant on top. Confirm the exact current schedule directly with the precinct clerk — fees are set at the precinct level and were updated as recently as 2023.
Also: some Travis County precincts don’t accept credit cards. Call ahead and bring cash or a money order as backup. Finding that out at the window is a frustrating way to lose a morning.
After you file, the court assigns a hearing date and issues a citation for the constable to serve on the defendant.
Two resources to know before you file. The Travis County Law Library at 314 W. 11th St. has staff experienced with JP court self-help — they can’t give legal advice, but they can make sure you’re filing in the right place with the right paperwork. The Austin Community Law Center provides limited-scope assistance for JP court matters and is worth contacting if your case is complex or you’re not sure how to frame your claims.
How to Serve Your Contractor, and Why This Is Where Cases Fall Apart
Service of process is where more pro se cases collapse than at any other stage. A judgment issued without proper service can be voided. Get this right.
If the company is organized as an LLC, search the Texas Secretary of State’s business database before you file anything. Find the registered agent — the person or entity designated to receive legal service. Many Austin contractors use a commercial registered agent, often CT Corporation or a similar service, with a Dallas address. Service goes to that registered agent, not to the contractor’s job site, not to the address on the invoice, not to the owner’s house. Filing the petition with the wrong service address is common, costly, and obvious in retrospect.
If your contractor operates under a trade name — “Smith Roofing,” “Central Texas HVAC Solutions” — you can’t sue just the trade name. You have to identify the actual legal person and name them correctly: John Smith d/b/a Smith Roofing. Find the legal name through Travis County Assumed Name Records at the Travis County Clerk’s office. For sole proprietors without a DBA, you still need the actual legal name on the petition.
Complications arise when a registered agent has resigned or can’t be located. This happens with newer or fly-by-night contractors — the exact kind you’re probably dealing with if you’re reading this. If the LLC’s registered agent has resigned and no replacement has been filed, Texas law lets you serve the Texas Secretary of State as agent for the company. The Secretary of State forwards notice to the company’s last known address. This route is slower and gives you less certainty the defendant has actual notice, so use the constable for initial attempts first.
Use the Travis County Constable for service. The constable generates a documented return of service, and that return is required for default judgments to hold up on appeal. Certified mail is technically permitted in JP court, but it’s a weaker foundation if the defendant challenges service or you need to enforce the judgment. No exceptions.
What Evidence to Bring to Your Hearing
JP court judges in Travis County hear contractor disputes routinely. They’ve seen the same patterns dozens of times. Walking in with organized, specific documentation is the difference between looking like someone with a real claim and someone venting.
The contract or written estimate is your foundation. If you signed a contract, bring it. If you never signed a formal contract, bring any written estimate, text exchange, or email thread that establishes scope and agreed price. Verbal-only agreements with no written or digital corroboration are survivable but genuinely difficult — the case becomes your word against the contractor’s, and judges decide those credibility contests unpredictably.
Bring payment records. Bank statements, canceled checks, receipts. Venmo and Zelle screenshots are routinely accepted — make sure they show the full transaction detail, including date, amount, recipient name, and any note you included. Screenshot the full transaction history, not just individual payments, so the judge sees the pattern and timing.
Dated, geotagged photos matter. Photos timestamped at the job site showing incomplete framing, a half-installed HVAC unit, or a foundation repair that wasn’t completed carry real weight. Don’t strip that metadata. And bring printed photos to the hearing — a judge looking at an 8x10 printout is more effective than a judge squinting at your phone screen.
Your written complaint record belongs in that folder too. The texts, emails, or certified letters you sent documenting problems and demanding the contractor return to finish or fix the work show you gave them a chance to remedy things. It counters the “he never told me there was a problem” defense directly. Document early, document specifically.
An independent repair estimate is how you establish damages with specificity. Get at least one written estimate from a licensed contractor for what it’ll cost to finish or fix the work. “It was a bad job” is not a damages figure. “Austin Roofing Company X provided a written estimate of $6,400 to remove and reinstall the incorrectly flashed valley sections” is. That distinction matters more than most filers expect until they’re standing in front of a judge.
Pull permit records from the Austin Development Services Department at austintexas.gov/department/development-services. Contractors are required to pull permits for most structural, electrical, mechanical, and plumbing work. If your contractor told you no permits were required and your permit history shows nothing was filed, that’s often significant — both as evidence of shoddy business practice and as a substantive code violation. For a broader look at what this kind of dispute can cost you on the other end, our legal & finance coverage tracks the practical and financial angles of contractor and property disputes across Austin.
What consistently fails in JP court: claims against LLCs the contractor has already dissolved, and purely verbal agreements with no documentation. If a contractor insists on cash-only, no-contract work, your legal remedies are limited going in. The written record is your safety net.
How Long This Actually Takes in Travis County
“Small claims” creates an impression of speed the actual docket doesn’t always match.
Filing to first hearing date currently runs roughly 30 to 60 days, depending on precinct and docket load. Defendants must be served at least 14 days before the hearing, so if service fails on the first attempt — the constable goes to the address and the defendant isn’t there, or the address turns out to be wrong — the case resets, typically adding another month or more.
Precincts 1 and 5 run slower than the others. If your dispute falls in one of those, expect hearing dates closer to the 60-day end.
Uncontested cases typically resolve in six to ten weeks from filing, assuming service goes smoothly. A contested case with one continuance: plan for three to five months. JP court judges in Texas typically rule from the bench on the day of the hearing — you don’t file briefs and wait weeks for a written ruling. The judge hears the case and tells you the result before you leave. That’s genuinely one of the better features of this court.
Either party has 21 days to appeal to County Court at Law. A JP court appeal is a brand-new trial, not a review of what the JP judge decided. If the contractor appeals a judgment against them, you’re starting over in a court with formal rules of evidence and procedure. At that level, an attorney is close to necessary, and the economics of the case change substantially. Worth thinking through before you file, especially for claims in the upper range.
If You Win, How to Actually Collect
Most guides skip this section. That’s a genuine disservice, because winning a judgment and collecting on it are two entirely different problems — and in Texas, collection is harder than most people expect.
A JP court judgment does not automatically move money from the contractor’s account to yours. You have to pursue collection, and Texas law protects judgment debtors in ways that directly affect contractor disputes.
Start with an Abstract of Judgment. File a certified copy with the Travis County District Clerk, which creates an automatic lien against any real property the defendant owns in Travis County. Before you do this, search traviscad.org — Travis Central Appraisal District’s public tool — to see whether the contractor or their business entity owns Travis County real estate worth liening. If they rent their home and their business doesn’t own property, the abstract does nothing immediately, though it becomes relevant if they ever buy.
Through a Writ of Execution, you can direct the Travis County Constable to seize non-exempt assets — bank accounts, equipment, vehicles — and sell them to satisfy the judgment. This works when it works. It requires knowing what assets exist and where they’re held. Post-judgment discovery lets you compel the defendant to answer questions and produce documents about their assets, including subpoenaing bank records, so you can identify what’s actually there before spending constable fees on a seizure attempt.
Here’s what Texas law protects from you: the homestead exemption shields their primary residence — you cannot force a sale. The tools-of-the-trade exemption under Texas Property Code §42.001 protects personal property used in a trade or business up to $30,000 in value. That may fully cover a contractor’s work truck, tools, and equipment. And Texas prohibits wage garnishment for civil money judgments entirely. You cannot garnish a paycheck.
The practical consequence is stark. A judgment against a sole proprietor who rents an apartment, drives a paid-off work van, and has a modest bank balance may be very difficult to collect in any practical timeframe. The judgment is valid for ten years and can be renewed, so you’re not permanently out of options — but you may be waiting for their circumstances to change.
This is why researching the defendant before you file matters more than anything else in this guide. Run the contractor’s name at traviscad.org and at the Travis County Clerk’s deed records. A judgment against a contractor who owns commercial property in Austin is a different situation than a judgment against someone whose only Travis County footprint is a storage unit full of tools. This step takes twenty minutes. Most homeowners skip it. Don’t.
When to Talk to a Lawyer First
For claims above $5,000, a consultation with an Austin civil litigation attorney — typically in the $150 to $300 range for thirty to sixty minutes — is money well spent before you file. A local attorney can tell you two things no self-help guide can: whether your case will actually hold up in court, and whether the defendant is likely to have anything to collect. If the answer to the second question is no, you may decide not to spend the next several months chasing a judgment you can’t enforce. That’s not defeatism — it’s a rational use of your time.
For claims approaching $20,000, especially if you anticipate the contractor will contest vigorously and potentially appeal, an attorney becomes increasingly valuable even though the JP court hearing itself is designed for self-represented filers. The consultation fee is cheap insurance against filing a technically correct case that fails on evidence or strategy grounds. If your dispute also involves a licensed contractor who performed work without pulling required permits, the broader question of what how to form an LLC in Austin and whether you need a lawyer costs versus what it saves is worth a separate look before you commit to either side of the table.
The JP court system in Travis County is genuinely accessible, the judges are experienced with contractor disputes, and the self-help infrastructure here is better than in most Texas counties. The Travis County Law Library at 314 W. 11th St. and the Austin Community Law Center are both legitimate resources — use them. But the gap between a winnable case and one you can actually collect on is the thing to close before you pay your filing fee. That’s the question worth answering first.
