How Do I Find Out My Court Date in Ontario?
“How do I find out my court date in Ontario?” is a question frequently asked by members of the public. Whether you’ve received a traffic ticket or a summons, understanding the process is essential to ensure you’re prepared for your court appearance.
Types of Charges
- In Ontario, you’ll encounter two main types of charges: traffic tickets and summons.
- Traffic Tickets: Typically, traffic tickets come in a distinctive yellow color and carry a specified fine. If you receive a traffic ticket but take no action, you’ll be convicted by default, and you’ll receive a fine notification in the mail.
- Summons: A summons is provided to you at the roadside. It outlines the charge and provides crucial information, including the date, time, and location of your court hearing. When you receive a summons, it’s mandatory to attend court as instructed.
Finding Your Court Date
How you find your court date in Ontario depends on the type of charge you’re dealing with:
- For Summons: If you’ve received a summons, your court date is clearly indicated on the summons itself. You’ll know when and where you need to appear in court.
- For Traffic Tickets: If you want to dispute a traffic ticket, you must take specific steps:
- Online Lookup: After filing your ticket and expressing your intent to dispute it, you can often find your court date online. This is a reliable method to confirm your court appearance date. Given that some Ontario offices can be quite busy, checking online can help ensure you have the correct date.
- Contact the Court: Alternatively, you can contact the court where you filed the ticket. When you get in touch, provide relevant information such as your driver’s license number, address, name, or the number at the top of the ticket. Be aware that court offices may experience high call volumes and wait times.
Additional Resources
- To understand the court procedures and legalities in Ontario, you can visit the official Ontario Ministry of the Attorney General website.
- For more information on court locations and services in Ontario, the Ontario Court Services website is a valuable resource.
- If you need further assistance or have questions about your specific situation, don’t hesitate to contact us for a free consultation. We’re here to provide guidance and support.
- How to Deal With Traffic Ticket Convictions in Ontario
- Unpaid Court Fines In Ontario
- Summon To Appear In Court – What Does It Mean?
- Why Hire A Paralegal To Fight Your Traffic Ticket
Video Transcription:
Members of the public often ask, how do I find out my court date in Ontario? To answer that question, you must keep in mind what type of charge were you given. There are two types in Ontario. One is actually a traffic ticket, which we talk about. The other is called a summons. When people talk about tickets, they’re talking about both.
But if you’re asking a question as to what my court date might be in Ontario, you really need to understand the difference between the two. A summons is given to you at roadside, and it will do two things. It will tell you what you’re charged with, and it will give you the date, time, and place of where you are to attend court.
So that question is answered right there, moment at right on the spot, and you know what to do. And as you attend court, cause you must attend court, through yourself or through hiring someone like my company to attend for you, to assist you. But on those particular matters you always know when your court date is by attending yourself or having OTD Legal there for you.
The actual ticket where you have a fine on the matter and they’re usually yellow, it requires that you do something more with it. So if you do nothing with the ticket, you will never see a court date and you’ll simply be convicted in default, which simply means if you do nothing, you will end up with a fine in the mail that you are commanded to pay.
If you do the next step, if you file that ticket and you want to fight that ticket, you will inevitably get a court date. It will be mailed to you, and you should get that in your mailbox. You can read that, you’ll find the date, oftentimes in Ontario these are busy, busy offices and that may not happen or mail gets lost. I think we all know that. You can do one thing to check on that, and that’s simply looking it up online and you can determine exactly when your court date might be, once it’s properly filed. Once they know you’re looking for a court date, they will post that for you and you can look it up online.
I would provide you all of those details, but OTD Legal is simply all over Ontario, and that is just simply too much information to be providing you in a very short video. The other way you may do that is that you know where you filed that particular ticket, and you may call the court and you can ask them, using your driver’s license number or your address, or your name or the number at the top of the ticket, to determine when your court date might be.
There are challenges in doing that in Ontario since these offices are quite busy. You wait many hours and sometimes, you know, certain days it’s almost impossible to get a call through. But inevitably, if you are successful getting through by calling, they will in fact provide you that particular date.
So again, just to recap, there are two types of procedural streams for tickets in Ontario. One are the traditional tickets under part one and the second procedural stream is under part three, and those are called summonses.
