Welcome to the Pine Tree Legal Assistance Small Claims Forms Preparation Tools.
Small Claims Court in Maine is for cases involving $6,000 or less.
Use these tools to prepare forms in a small claims case.
To use the program, follow the links below.
This will take you to a national legal services website. There you will find an on-line interview that will help
you prepare the forms. Then you can print the completed forms and use them.
Tips on using the HotDocs Interviews to complete Small Claims forms
- When you get to the site, you can either
register or go directly to the "form" without registering.
If you just want to view - or view and print - your results, you don't need to register.
Registration allows you to also save your results, so that you can come back and
view them later. Also, if you are missing some required information,
registering would allow you to come back to the site later
to add that information, without having to start over again. Your stored data is private; no one can look at it
unless you give them your user name and password.
- When you click on one of the links below, you may see an Internet Explorer "security warning." You can
safely go ahead and load all of the information on the page.
- You will need to use Internet Explorer 6.0 or higher. Our apologies to Macintosh and Firefox users.
To begin a case in Small Claims Court you need to prepare a
Statement
of Claim.
You can serve the papers on the defendant by sending a
Notice of Service. If the defendant does not sign and return the Notice of Service within twenty days, you
will have to try another way to serve the papers. If the defendant does sign the Notice of Service you must file
the original and two copies of the Notice with the Court, along with your Statement of Claim.
If you will not file more than three small claims cases during this calendar month you may request the
Clerk to arrange to serve the papers on the defendant by filing an
Affidavit and Request
for Service. This can be by mail or by a deputy sheriff. You will have to pay for service unless
the court orders that you can proceed without payment of fees.
If you have no money to pay court or sheriff's fees, you may file an
Application
to Proceed without Payment of Fees. There is a lot of financial information you will need to
provide along with that Application.
If you already have a small claims judgment and want to schedule a "Disclosure Hearing" in court
to try to collect that judgment, use the
Request for
Disclosure Hearing.
