A contractor botches your renovation. Three years later you finally decide to do something about it, and you look up the Small Claims Tribunals — the cheap forum, no lawyers, filing fee of ten dollars.
The door closed a year ago. Your claim is still perfectly good and will remain so for another three years; what has run out is the tribunal's power to hear it.
Two years, and it is not a limitation period
The Small Claims Tribunals Act puts the cut-off inside the jurisdiction section rather than anywhere marked "limitation":
"the jurisdiction of a tribunal does not extend to a claim — (a) the value of which exceeds the prescribed limit; or (b) after the expiry of 2 years after the date on which the cause of action accrued."
A contract claim in Singapore ordinarily has six years to run under the Limitation Act. So between years two and six the claim is alive, enforceable, and barred from the only forum designed to be affordable. What remains is the Magistrates' or District Court, where lawyers appear and costs follow the event — which for a two-thousand-dollar dispute usually means letting it go.
Two years from when the cause of action accrued, not from when you noticed, and not from when you gave up negotiating.
The limits, and the paper that lifts them
The ordinary ceiling is $20,000 and both figures sit in the Act itself, which means moving them takes a Gazette order rather than a rule change. The higher figure is $30,000, and it is reached by consent:
"a tribunal has jurisdiction to hear and determine any claim the value of which exceeds the prescribed limit but does not exceed the prescribed extended limit, if the parties to the claim so agree by a memorandum signed by them."
The judiciary calls this a Memorandum of Consent and requires it as an upload when a claim exceeds $20,000. Since the other side has to sign, a defendant who prefers the expense of a District Court can simply decline.
A claim slightly over the limit can be brought by abandoning the excess. Splitting one dispute into two claims to fit is prohibited outright.
What the tribunals can hear
The Schedule is a closed list: contracts for the sale of goods or the provision of services; damage to property in tort; residential leases not exceeding two years; several strata and Town Council charges; and an HDB improvement contribution. Two strata categories were added with effect from 1 October 2025, so the list is actively changing.
Consumer claims arrive through a different door. The Consumer Protection (Fair Trading) Act gives the tribunals jurisdiction over unfair practice claims "despite section 5(1)(a)" of their own Act, and adds one oddly specific category: a deposit paid in relation to a motor vehicle sale contract. The same section then applies the $20,000 ceiling and the two-year bar to those claims as well.
What they cannot
Salary disputes go to the Employment Claims Tribunals instead. Road accidents are excluded in terms — the Act removes claims for property damage "by an accident arising out of or in connection with the use of a motor vehicle", which sits awkwardly beside the motor-vehicle deposit claim the consumer legislation puts back in.
Personal injury is a subtler case, and worth stating precisely because it is usually described wrongly. There is no exclusion clause for it. The Act simply never mentions injury — the word appears nowhere in it, while "prescribed limit" appears seven times and "specified claim" five. Personal injury is outside jurisdiction because no head of jurisdiction covers it, not because anything excludes it.
No lawyers, with one exception that matters to businesses
The rule is blunt: a party "must present the party's own case", and no party "may be represented by an advocate and solicitor".
A company is not thereby silenced. The Act lists categories who may appear for someone else, and a body corporate may send one of its officers or full-time employees, provided the tribunal is satisfied that person "has sufficient knowledge of the case and sufficient authority to bind the party". Parents may appear for minors, and someone prevented by age, illiteracy or infirmity may be represented too.
What it costs
Filing fees run on a scale, and they are markedly higher for companies than for individuals. A claim of $5,000 or less costs $10 for an individual and $50 for any other entity. Between $5,000 and $10,000 it is $20 or $100. Above $10,000 the fee becomes a percentage of the amount claimed — 1% for an individual, 3% for an entity — so a $25,000 claim costs an individual $250 and a company $750.
Appealing is a different order of expense: $20 for a notice of appeal to the tribunal, $100 for permission to appeal to the General Division, and $600 for the appeal itself. The Registrar has power to waive, defer or refund any of these.
The employment forum has its own clocks
Anyone redirected to the Employment Claims Tribunals should note the numbers are similar and the conditions are not. The ceiling is $20,000, rising to $30,000 — but the trigger for the higher figure is narrower than it sounds. It requires participation in the Tripartite Mediation Framework, or a mediation requested and conducted with a union officer's involvement. Ordinary mediation at the employment claims centre is a precondition for every claim, so hearing "mediation raises the limit" and assuming yours qualifies is an easy mistake.
The employment clock is also far shorter: a claim must be lodged within four weeks of the claim referral certificate being issued.
What to do with it
The date that matters is when the cause of action accrued, so that is the one to write down when a dispute starts rather than when it sours. Anything approaching the two-year mark should be filed even if negotiations are continuing, because filing preserves the forum and settlement remains available afterwards.
For a claim between $20,000 and $30,000, the consent memorandum is worth raising early, while the other side still wants the matter over with cheaply.
Where this comes from
The jurisdiction, limits, consent memorandum and representation rules are from the Small Claims Tribunals Act 1984 — sections 2, 5, 8 and 23 and the Schedule — read on Singapore Statutes Online on 18 September 2026, in the version current as at that date. Consumer jurisdiction is from section 7 of the Consumer Protection (Fair Trading) Act 2003, and the fees from the Schedule to the Small Claims Tribunals Rules, in the consolidation in force from 1 April 2022. The employment limits are from regulations 16 and 17 of the Employment Claims Regulations 2017, and the contract limitation period from section 6 of the Limitation Act 1959.
The exclusions of employment and personal injury claims come from the judiciary's published list of eligible cases rather than from the Act, which is why they are described above as absences from the Schedule rather than as exclusions. The judiciary's own page notes that its examples are not exhaustive.
