PSA: Comparing free court forms vs paid templates for landlord cases

Filed an eviction case last month. Spent 4 hours on the free court website forms and they rejected it twice for formatting issues. Then paid $35 for a local legal template pack from a guy who used to be a housing clerk. One submit, zero problems. The difference was the paid version had all the local court rules baked in. Has anyone else found that free forms miss specific county requirements?

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john4302mo ago

Did your friend have to pay extra for updates or was it a one-time thing? I had a buddy who went through the same headache with the free forms for a landlord case in a different county, and he ended up paying $50 for a pack from a retired paralegal that saved him three weeks of back-and-forth. It's wild how much the local court rules matter, like the paid ones just knew all the small filing quirks you'd never guess from the state website.

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abbyk102mo ago

retired paralegal" makes me wonder if there's a black market for courthouse insiders.

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