Effective March 1, the Michigan Supreme Court and Court of Appeals will collect the $25 electronic filing system fee required by MCL 600.1986 — in addition to the $375 filing fee — for civil actions that are commenced in those courts.
This fee, according to an announcement Monday by Michigan Appellate Courts, does not apply to civil appeals, only original action.
It is being charged regardless whether the case is initiated electronically through TrueFiling or through the filing of paper copies.
Governmental entities and those parties entitled to a fee waiver are exempt from paying the fee.
Sometime in the near future, the announcement stated, filers who pay fees by credit card when submitting their documents electronically through TrueFiling will be charged an automated payment service fee, as authorized by MCL 600.1986.
This fee will be a small percentage of the total amount of the filing and will be paid to the credit card companies to cover the rates they charge for using their cards.
The assessment of the e-filing system fee and the automated payment service fee (when implemented) will be clearly identified on the payment screen documents are submitted to TrueFiling.
In addition, the courts announced the following technical enhancements to TrueFiling that will be implemented on or soon after March 1:
• The allowable file size for individual documents uploaded to TrueFiling will increase from 10 MB to 25 MB.
• Electronic documents will be time-stamped upon their receipt by TrueFiling which will allow the email notifications of the filing to include links to the time-stamped version of the document.
Similarly, documents accessed through TrueFiling's My Recent Activity and History pages will be time-stamped versions.
• When either court accepts an e-filed document, the resulting email notification and the status in TrueFiling will indicate that it has been “Filed” as opposed to “Tentatively Filed.”
However, “Filed” status in TrueFiling after acceptance by the Court does not necessarily mean the filing satisfies jurisdictional requirements or complies with the court rules.
If there are problems with the filing, a staff person from the court will contact the filer directly.
These enhancements to TrueFiling are being made in response to feedback from filers who completed the e-filing survey last summer, according to court officials.
Additional enhancements will be implemented in the near future to make TrueFiling more streamlined and easier to use.
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