Arkansas Eviction Process: Notices, Court Paths, and Writs

The Arkansas eviction process runs in four stages: a written notice to the tenant, a lawsuit filed in either district court or circuit court, a court order called a writ of possession, and a sheriff-executed removal. Arkansas is unusual in offering landlords two separate court paths with different deadlines, and more unusual still in backing the civil process with a criminal statute that can turn a tenant’s refusal to leave into a misdemeanor.

Grounds a Landlord Can Use

Under the Residential Landlord-Tenant Act, a landlord can start an eviction when a tenant fails to pay rent, stays past the end of the lease, or breaks the terms of the rental agreement.¹

The separate unlawful detainer statute reaches further. It covers holding over after a lease expires, refusing to pay rent after a written demand, failing to keep the property safe and livable, and letting the property become a nuisance.² The nuisance category includes drug activity and other criminal conduct on the premises.

Written Notice Before Filing

Every eviction in Arkansas starts with a written notice. The waiting period depends on the reason, and a case filed before the window has run gets dismissed.

Nonpayment of rent under the Residential Landlord-Tenant Act: once rent is five days past due, the landlord can terminate the agreement.³
Nonpayment under the unlawful detainer path: the landlord must first give a written three-day demand to quit and pay before the tenant qualifies as an unlawful detainer.²
Other lease violations: a written notice describing the problem, with at least fourteen days to fix it. A timely cure stops the termination.³
Month-to-month tenancy with no fault: one full rental period’s notice. Monthly tenants get a month, weekly tenants get a week.

These windows are not optional. If the lawsuit is filed before the notice period has fully run, the court will throw the case out and the landlord has to start again.

The Two Court Paths

Arkansas landlords can file in district court under the Residential Landlord-Tenant Act or in circuit court as an unlawful detainer action. The paths have different paperwork, different deadlines for the tenant, and different scopes at the hearing.

District Court Eviction

The district court route is the simpler of the two. The landlord files a complaint along with a signed affidavit from someone with personal knowledge of the facts.¹ After the filing fee is paid, the court issues an order to vacate and an order to show cause. The tenant then has ten calendar days from receipt to appear and explain why they should not be evicted. If they don’t appear, the court enters a default writ of possession.

Circuit Court Unlawful Detainer

The unlawful detainer action takes more paperwork. The landlord files a complaint and affidavit, plus a Notice of Intention to Issue Writ of Possession that the clerk attaches to the summons.⁴ That notice tells the tenant in plain terms that the landlord is asking the court to hand possession to the landlord through a sheriff-enforced writ. Circuit court filing fees start at $165.

The response window is what makes this path feel fast. The tenant has only five days after service, excluding Sundays and legal holidays, to file a written objection. If no objection is filed, the court can issue the writ of possession without any hearing at all.⁴

Serving the Tenant

Nothing moves forward until the tenant is properly served with the court papers. Arkansas allows service through a sheriff’s deputy or a licensed private process server. The district court path also allows certified mail with restricted delivery, though a tenant can refuse to sign and defeat that method. If personal service fails after a real attempt, the papers can be posted conspicuously on the front door.⁴ Bad service is one of the most common reasons eviction cases get delayed or dismissed.

What Happens at the Hearing

What the court decides depends on which court heard the case and whether the tenant responded.

In district court, a tenant who appears within the ten-day show-cause window gets a full hearing. The landlord presents evidence of unpaid rent or a lease violation; the tenant raises defenses. If the tenant shows that rent was paid or the notice was defective, the court can allow them to stay.

In circuit court, the hearing is narrower. It decides only who has the right to possess the property right now, not the final money judgment for unpaid rent or damages. The financial side is resolved later, through a separate trial or a counterclaim. The practical effect is that a landlord can regain possession fairly quickly even when a money dispute drags on.

In either court, if the tenant never responds or never shows up, the landlord wins by default and the court issues a writ of possession.

The Writ of Possession and the 24-Hour Window

A writ of possession is a court order directing the sheriff to physically remove the tenant and return the property to the landlord. Once the writ is issued, the sheriff serves a copy on the tenant in person or, if nobody can be found within eight hours, by posting it on the front door.⁵

From the moment of service, the tenant has twenty-four hours to leave on their own. After that, the sheriff can forcibly remove them, break locks, restrain anyone who interferes, and move the tenant’s belongings to a storage facility or other location the landlord controls.⁵ The landlord cannot do any of this personally. Only the sheriff or a police chief has authority to enforce the writ.

Arkansas’s Criminal Failure-to-Vacate Statute

This is where Arkansas diverges from most states. A tenant who refuses to leave after receiving ten days’ written notice for nonpayment of rent commits a misdemeanor under a statute that predates the modern civil eviction process.⁶ The fine is small, between one and twenty-five dollars, but every day the tenant stays past the notice deadline counts as a separate offense. The criminal charge runs alongside the civil case, not instead of it. The civil writ of possession is still the mechanism that actually returns the property.

Property Left Behind

Once the lease has ended, whether by eviction, expiration, or voluntary move-out, anything the tenant leaves on the premises is treated as abandoned. The landlord can dispose of it, sell it, or throw it away without further notice or court approval.⁷ Many states require a waiting period or written notice before a landlord can touch abandoned belongings. Arkansas does not.

Defenses a Tenant Can Raise

Tenants facing eviction in Arkansas have several defenses available, and the ones that attack the landlord’s paperwork tend to be the strongest.

Defective notice: wrong notice period, no writing, or a lawsuit filed before the notice window closed.
Improper service: the tenant was never properly served, which strips the court of authority to enter a judgment.
The allegations aren’t true: rent was actually paid, or the alleged lease violation didn’t happen.
Waiver: the landlord accepted rent or otherwise continued the tenancy after learning of the violation, which can waive the right to evict over that issue.
Discrimination: eviction based on race, religion, sex, national origin, familial status, or disability violates the Fair Housing Act.⁸

Tenants can also bring counterclaims in the same case, for example over an unreturned security deposit. One defense that does not exist in Arkansas: habitability. Arkansas is the only state that has not adopted an implied warranty of habitability for residential rentals, so a tenant generally cannot defeat an eviction by arguing the property was in poor condition.

Self-Help Evictions Are Illegal

Changing the locks, shutting off the water, removing doors, or hauling a tenant’s belongings to the curb without a court order is illegal in Arkansas. A landlord who skips the court process exposes themselves to liability, and the tenant may be able to get back into the property through a court order. The narrow exception is a genuinely abandoned unit, but abandonment and a few days of late rent are not the same thing.

Federal Rules That Can Change the Timeline

Several federal laws can delay or override the Arkansas process in specific situations. They do not replace state procedure, but they add requirements the landlord must satisfy.

Active-Duty Military Tenants

Before any default judgment, the landlord must file an affidavit stating whether the tenant is on active military duty.⁹ If the status is unknown, the court may require a bond. If the tenant is on active duty, the court must appoint an attorney and may stay the case for at least ninety days. A false military affidavit is a federal misdemeanor.

Federally Subsidized Housing

Tenants in public housing, Section 8, and other HUD-assisted programs can be evicted only for “good cause.” A landlord in these programs cannot simply decline to renew the lease without a qualifying reason such as a serious violation, criminal activity, or a legitimate business need. For public housing, the housing authority must usually offer an administrative grievance hearing before filing a court case.

Survivors of domestic violence, sexual assault, or stalking in federally subsidized housing have additional protections under the Violence Against Women Act. A landlord cannot evict a survivor because of the abuse, and the survivor can ask that the abuser be removed from the lease without losing their own housing.¹⁰

Federally Backed Mortgages: 30-Day Notice

Properties with federally backed mortgages or that participate in certain HUD programs require at least thirty days’ written notice before a nonpayment eviction is filed. As of early 2026, this requirement is still in effect; a HUD proposal to rescind it has been indefinitely delayed.

Bankruptcy Automatic Stay

When a tenant files for bankruptcy, a federal automatic stay temporarily halts most collection actions, including a pending eviction. The stay does not apply if the landlord already obtained a judgment for possession before the bankruptcy filing. Landlords can also ask the bankruptcy court to lift the stay, and those motions are routinely granted. A tenant who filed bankruptcy within the previous year may receive little or no protection.

1
Justia. Arkansas Code 18-17-901 – Grounds for Eviction of Tenant
2
Justia. Arkansas Code 18-60-304 – Actions Constituting Unlawful Detainer
3
Justia. Arkansas Code 18-17-701 – Noncompliance With Rental Agreement – Failure to Pay Rent – Removal of Evicted Tenants Personal Property
4
Justia. Arkansas Code 18-60-307 – Proceedings in Court
5
Justia. Arkansas Code 18-60-310 – Execution of Writ of Possession
6
Justia. Arkansas Code 18-16-101 – Failure to Pay Rent
7
Justia. Arkansas Code 18-16-108 – Property Left on Premises After Termination of Lease
8
Department of Justice. The Fair Housing Act
9
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 50 USC 3931 – Protection of Servicemembers Against Default Judgments
10
U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. Violence Against Women Act (VAWA)