Outline of the eviction process in Delaware

Delaware evictions are summary possession actions in the Justice of the Peace Court under the Residential Landlord-Tenant Code (25 Del. C. c. 51, 55 and 57). The rent-nonpayment demand period was lengthened from five to seven days by 85 Del. Laws, c. 436 (Senate Substitute 1 for Senate Bill 116, signed August 18, 2026, effective September 1, 2026), so guides and form notices dated before that change are wrong. Delaware also phased in a statewide right-to-representation and eviction-diversion law starting in 2023 (originally enacted as Senate Bill 1, now codified at 25 Del. C. c. 56), which requires a multilingual disclosure with most eviction notices, mandatory pre-trial mediation in most cases, and free counsel for qualifying tenants as funding allows, with full implementation required no later than June 30, 2028. On appeal, either side gets a fast five-day window to a three-justice panel, not the longer period sometimes assumed.

1. Grounds for eviction in Delaware

• Nonpayment of rent (§5502).
• Breach of the rental agreement or the tenant's statutory duties (§5513(a)).
• Conduct causing or threatening substantial or irreparable harm to persons or property, which the court can treat as not requiring the usual mediation step (§5513(b)).
• Termination of a month-to-month tenancy, or nonrenewal of a fixed-term tenancy, with 60 days' written notice from either party (§5106).
• Holding over after a lease ends without renewal.

Delaware has no just-cause requirement and no rent control for conventional housing (manufactured-home communities have a separate rent-justification law, 25 Del. C. c. 70). Retaliation within 90 days of a tenant complaint or organizing activity is presumed retaliatory (§5516). Fair housing protections, including for source of income in some circumstances, apply under Delaware's fair housing law; confirm current scope before relying on it in a specific case.

2. Notices and how they must be served

• Nonpayment: at least seven days. After the grace period during which a late fee cannot be imposed, the landlord may demand the past-due rent in writing and state that a court action may be filed if payment is not made within a period stated in the notice, which must be not less than seven days after the notice is given or sent (§5502(a), as amended). A tenant who pays all rent due before the landlord files, or before the landlord obtains judgment in cases where a subsequent payment is accepted, can defeat the nonpayment claim (§5502(c), (d)). Late fees may not exceed 5 percent of the monthly rent and cannot be charged until five days after the due date.
• Lease or Code violations: at least seven days to cure, describing the breach and warning that continued violation may support a summary possession filing. If the tenant commits a substantially similar breach again within one year, the landlord may rely on the earlier notice without giving a new cure period (§5513(a)).
• Substantial or irreparable harm: the landlord can move directly to filing without a cure period (§5513(b)).
• Month-to-month or nonrenewal: 60 days, beginning on the first day of the month following actual notice for a periodic tenancy (§5106).
• Federally covered properties add the CARES Act's separate 30-day notice for nonpayment where it still applies; confirm applicability, since HUD and USDA guidance on this has shifted.

Day counting. The day the notice is given is not counted, but the last day of the period is, unless it falls on a weekend or legal holiday, in which case the period runs to the next business day. Intermediate Saturdays, Sundays and holidays are skipped only when the stated period is less than seven days, so they are not skipped for the current seven-day rent demand but are skipped for shorter periods such as the five-day appeal window discussed below (§5112).

Service. A pre-suit notice may be served personally or left at the tenant's residence or business with a person of suitable age, by registered or certified mail, or by first-class mail evidenced by a certificate of mailing (a signed return receipt is not required for mailed service to be valid, and the certificate or receipt is treated as proof of service). Posting the notice on the unit is valid only if combined with a certificate of mailing or return receipt, not by itself (§5113).

Right-to-representation disclosure. Since November 22, 2023, landlords must give tenants the Coordinator-approved informational notice on legal representation and eviction diversion, in English, Spanish and Haitian Creole, when a rental agreement is first signed, at its first renewal or modification, whenever a notice that could lead to eviction is given, and when a tenant's housing subsidy is being terminated (25 Del. C. §5606). Tenants at or below 200 percent of the federal poverty guidelines may qualify for free legal representation, with exceptions including where the landlord owns three or fewer units and is unrepresented; qualifying tenants in arrears are also referred to Delaware's rental assistance program (§5602). The program is being phased in, prioritizing households with a child or pregnant woman, households below 100 percent of the federal poverty guidelines, high-eviction zip codes, and veterans or active-duty service members, with statewide coverage required no later than June 30, 2028 (§5607). That date comes from 85 Del. Laws, c. 207 (Senate Bill 132, approved September 3, 2025), which moved it from November 22, 2026; confirm current coverage in your county.

3. Filing for summary possession

The landlord files a summary possession complaint in the Justice of the Peace Court covering the county where the rental unit sits. The court must set the notice of the complaint and hearing to be served at least 5 and not more than 30 days before the hearing (§5705), typically served personally, on an occupant, or by posting combined with mail (§5706). For most residential filings the landlord must also provide lead-based-paint compliance documentation unless the tenant denied access for required inspections (§5704A). On the Justice of the Peace Court’s current civil fee schedule, a landlord/tenant filing is $45, service of a writ of summary possession is $40, and an appeal to a three-judge panel is $60; fees can change, so confirm before filing. The court cannot award more than $25,000.

4. Mediation and trial

Most summary possession cases must be scheduled for mediation under the Residential Eviction Diversion Program before trial, completed at least 48 hours before the trial date; a tenant's failure to engage with mediation within 15 days of service does not delay the trial date. Mediation does not apply to forthwith-summons cases or to cases where the landlord shows substantial evidence of irreparable harm (§5702A). If the case is not resolved in mediation, it proceeds to trial before a justice of the peace (or, if timely demanded, a six-person jury drawn from the Superior Court jury list) (§5709, §5710, §5713). Bring the lease, ledger, the notice and proof of how and when it was served, and any witness with personal knowledge. Common defenses include a defective or improperly served notice, a missing or late right-to-representation disclosure, acceptance of rent after the notice was given (which can waive it unless the lease reserves the right), retaliation, and the tenant's repair-related remedies under Delaware's landlord-obligations chapter (25 Del. C. c. 53) after proper written notice to the landlord.

Judgment, including for rent owed where the tenant was properly served, is usually entered at trial (§5711). A default judgment (entered when the tenant does not appear) can be reopened on a motion to vacate filed within 10 days (§5712).

5. Appeal, the writ of possession and the lockout

A party may seek review within five days of judgment: a trial de novo before a special three-justice panel if the case was tried without a jury, or review of the record by the same panel if it was a jury trial. The party seeking the stay must post an undertaking (bond) to keep the writ from issuing, subject to in forma pauperis relief for those who cannot pay (§5717). Separately, in a nonpayment case where the default arose out of a good faith dispute, a tenant may stay execution by paying the full judgment and costs, or by filing an undertaking to pay within 10 days of judgment (§5716); Delaware also allows redemption, paying all past-due rent and costs, at any time before the writ is actually executed, except for a tenant who has had 2 judgments of possession for nonpayment in the preceding 18 months (§5716A, added by 85 Del. Laws, c. 436, effective September 1, 2026).

The court cannot issue the writ of possession until the appeal period has run and, for a default judgment, until the 10-day window to move to vacate has run (§5715(a)). The officer executing the writ must give the tenant at least 24 hours' notice, and the lockout itself must occur between sunrise and sunset. Property the tenant leaves behind may be removed and stored at the tenant's expense; the tenant has seven days to reclaim it before it is treated as abandoned. A manufactured home must be stored for 30 days at the tenant’s expense before it can be disposed of; prepaying a per diem charge equal to 7 days’ rent only extends the time before the home may be removed from the lot, from 24 hours to 7 days (§5715). Self-help evictions, such as changing locks or removing a tenant's belongings without a court-ordered lockout, are not permitted under Delaware law. A tenant removed or excluded without a valid court order may recover possession or end the lease, plus three times the damages or three times the per diem rent for the period of exclusion, whichever is greater, and court costs (§5313).

Typical timeline

Step	Typical time
Rent demand notice	At least 7 days
Notice of complaint and hearing served	5 to 30 days before hearing
Mediation	Before trial, completed at least 48 hours ahead
Appeal or motion-to-vacate window	5 days (appeal); 10 days (default judgment)
Writ of possession and 24-hour lockout notice	Issued after the above windows run

An uncontested nonpayment case commonly takes several weeks from the demand notice to the constable's lockout; mediation, a jury demand, or an appeal to the three-justice panel each add time.

Recent law changes landlords should know

• Seven-day rent demand. §5502 was amended to require at least seven days' notice before filing for nonpayment; do not use an older five-day notice template.
• Right to representation and eviction diversion (2023, phasing through 2028). Enacted as Senate Bill 1 and codified at 25 Del. C. c. 56: a multilingual disclosure required with most eviction-related notices, mandatory pre-trial mediation in most cases, and free counsel for income-qualifying tenants, phased in statewide by June 30, 2028 under 85 Del. Laws, c. 207 (2025), which extended the original November 22, 2026 deadline.
• Eviction record shielding (effective January 29, 2026). 85 Del. Laws, c. 106 added §5720: the court must shield a summary possession record on the tenant’s motion if the complaint was withdrawn or dismissed, judgment was for the tenant, or 5 or more years have passed since a judgment the tenant has satisfied with no similar judgment in those 5 years, among other grounds. Shielded cases will not show up in screening searches of court records.
• Local rental licensing. Wilmington and other municipalities require rental licenses for residential rental property; confirm current local requirements, since some Justice of the Peace Courts ask for the license number at filing.

What actually goes wrong

• Sending a five-day rent demand instead of the current seven-day demand under §5502.
• Skipping or misdating the Chapter 56 right-to-representation disclosure that must go out with the notice.
• Posting the notice on the door without also mailing it, which is not valid service by itself.
• Filing without going through required mediation, or assuming an exception applies when it does not.
• Treating the appeal deadline as ten days when it is five.
• Requesting the writ before the appeal window, or the ten-day vacate window on a default judgment, has actually run.
• Assuming any employee or property manager can appear for a corporate landlord without confirming current Justice of the Peace Court rules on representation.
• Disposing of a tenant's abandoned property before the statutory reclaim period expires.

When to bring in an attorney

Delaware's Justice of the Peace Court forms are built for self-represented landlords, and individual owners commonly file their own straightforward nonpayment cases. A corporation, LLC or other entity may be represented by a non-attorney officer or employee only after it files a Certificate of Representation (Form 50) with the Chief Magistrate with the $20 annual fee (Justice of the Peace Court Civil Rule 91). Use an attorney for breach and irreparable-harm cases, for any appeal to the three-justice panel, for subsidized or federally backed housing, and whenever a tenant is represented under the Chapter 56 program. The Delaware attorneys listed below represent landlords in Justice of the Peace Court and on appeal.

Sources

• 25 Del. C. c. 51 (General Provisions), including §5106, §5112, §5113.
• 25 Del. C. c. 55 (Tenant Obligations and Landlord Remedies), including §5501, §5502 (as amended, 85 Del. Laws, c. 436), §5513, §5516.
• 25 Del. C. c. 56 (Right to Legal Representation in Evictions and Other Landlord-Tenant Actions), §5601 through §5607 (enacted 84 Del. Laws, c. 112; amended 85 Del. Laws, c. 207).
• 25 Del. C. c. 57 (Summary Possession), including §5702A, §5704, §5704A, §5705, §5706, §5709 through §5717.
• Delaware General Assembly, Delaware Code Online, delcode.delaware.gov.

This guide is general information for Delaware landlords and is not legal advice. Statutes and court rules change; confirm current fees, forms, court-specific rules and any figures above before relying on them in a specific case.