Virginia's Court Fine and Cost Schedule Explained

A Virginia court schedule means one of two things, and which one a person wants depends entirely on why they are asking. It can mean when a court sits — the times and places a particular court hears traffic, criminal and civil matters. Or it can mean what a case costs — the statewide fine and cost figures that apply the same way in every general district court. Virginia law fixes both, but through two different mechanisms and at two different levels, and the two are covered in that order below.

When a Virginia court is in session, and who sets that schedule

There is no single statewide calendar of Virginia court dates, and the reason is in the Code. Va. Code § 16.1-69.35 makes it the chief judge of each district’s job to “determine the times each such court shall be held for the trial of civil, criminal or traffic matters and cases,” and, in counties, to decide whether court is also held somewhere other than the county seat. The same section requires that a schedule of the times and places at which court is held be filed with the Executive Secretary of the Supreme Court and kept posted at the courthouse, and that the clerk make it available to the public on request.

So the authoritative sitting schedule for any given Virginia court exists — it is simply published at that court and by that district, not centrally. Va. Code § 16.1-69.6 divides the Commonwealth into the districts this applies to, numbered first through thirty-first with a separate district two-A, and each of those chief judges sets times independently. That is why no general answer to “when is court” holds for the whole Commonwealth, and why the court named on a summons, or its clerk’s office, is the right place to ask. The same section also lets a judge move a particular matter from one designated place to another to suit the parties’ convenience or to move the docket along, so a posted schedule sets the ordinary pattern rather than guaranteeing where one specific case is called.

None of that answers “when is my case,” which comes from the case record rather than the posted schedule — the online case information system is the source for that, and is covered at the end of this page.

The other schedule: the statewide fine and cost figures

The second meaning is the one that actually carries dollar figures. The fine and cost schedule is a set of statewide numbers, fixed by statute and by Supreme Court rule, that apply the same way in every Virginia general district court — what a given charge costs if it is prepaid or if it results in a conviction. Unlike sitting times, it does not depend on which court or which judge handles the case.

Why the schedule exists at all

Before a uniform schedule, the amount a driver paid for a routine infraction could vary from one courthouse to the next, since fines were otherwise left to case-by-case discretion within a broad statutory ceiling. Requiring one statewide schedule for prepayable infractions removes that variation for the routine cases the schedule covers: the same speeding infraction carries the same prepayable figure whether it was written in a rural county or a major city, which is also what makes it possible to resolve a qualifying ticket by mail without a judge personally setting the amount.

The uniform fine schedule

Va. Code § 16.1-69.40:1(C) requires the Supreme Court of Virginia to establish, by rule, a schedule of the fines and any civil penalties for the traffic infractions a person may resolve by prepayment instead of a court appearance. That schedule is uniform across the Commonwealth — the same infraction carries the same prepayable fine whether the ticket was written in one county or another — and by the same subsection it has to be prominently posted wherever fines are paid. It does not override a trial judge’s discretion in an individual case; it only fixes what a prepaid resolution costs.

The default fine, if the offense’s own section is silent

Most of the fine schedule’s figures trace back to one default rule. Va. Code § 46.2-113 says that unless a specific Title 46.2 offense states its own penalty, a violation is a traffic infraction punishable by a fine of not more than the Class 4 misdemeanor maximum — $250. Plenty of offenses do set their own figure instead, which is why two tickets that look similar on paper can carry different fines; the specific section named on the summons controls whenever it says anything at all.

The fixed court cost, on top of the fine

Separately from the fine, Va. Code § 16.1-69.48:1 adds a fixed cost to every district court conviction:

Case type	Fixed court cost
Traffic infraction	$51
Misdemeanor (e.g. reckless driving)	$61
Failure to appear, added on top	$35

These figures do not vary by court or by county; they are set at the state level and apportioned by statute among several state funds. A driver’s total is therefore the offense’s fine, plus this fixed cost, plus anything else a specific statute adds — not one number pulled from a single line of a schedule.

Putting the two pieces together shows the range involved. At the low end, an infraction with no separately stated fine and no failure to appear totals at most $250 plus $51, or $301. At the high end, a Class 1 misdemeanor — the class reckless driving falls into — can carry a fine of up to $2,500 under Va. Code § 18.2-11, plus the $61 misdemeanor cost, before any further statutory add-on. Most tickets fall well under either extreme, because most specific offenses set their own, lower figure rather than relying on the default.

A different kind of schedule: circuit court clerk fees

Some searches for “court schedule of costs” actually mean something else again: the fee a circuit court clerk charges for recording documents, issuing copies, or other clerk services, which is a civil-records matter rather than a traffic-case cost. Va. Code § 17.1-275 sets that schedule. Recording and indexing a document runs from $18 for ten pages or fewer up to $52 for a longer instrument, with a separate per-page rate for oversized plats and maps — figures that apply to deeds, judgments and similar filings, not to a traffic ticket’s fine or cost. A driver who searches “court schedule of costs” while actually thinking about a traffic ticket almost never needs this fee table at all; it becomes relevant only if the same person is separately dealing with a circuit court clerk for an unrelated civil filing.

Finding when your specific case is scheduled

A posted sitting schedule tells a driver when that court hears traffic matters in general; it does not say when one particular case is called. For that, the online case information system is the accurate source, and the court named on the summons is the fallback if the case does not yet appear there. How Virginia court payment actually works covers what happens if a scheduled date is missed entirely, and how those figures interact with whether a specific charge can be prepaid at all. A case that has been appealed moves to a different court’s calendar altogether: § 16.1-69.35 governs the district courts, so an appealed case is scheduled by the circuit court’s own calendar instead, and it is set for a completely new trial rather than a continuation of the district court docket entry.

The short version worth remembering: Virginia sets the money centrally and the calendar locally. The fine and cost figures are fixed once for the whole Commonwealth; the times a court actually sits are fixed by each district’s chief judge and posted at that courthouse; and the date for one particular case comes from the case record rather than from either schedule. A Virginia traffic attorney can confirm the actual total for a specific charge faster than working through the schedule by hand.