Question: The clerk charges a fee of a $1.00 per page of the petition to attach to my citation. Can I just request a citation and attach my own copies?

Answer: According to Rick Keeney of Professional Civil Process, the answer is a nuanced Yes. The reason for the nuance is that at the time of this writing, the majority of the clerks still believe that their office must physically attach a copy of the petition to the citation they have prepared.

This means that you can either: (1) pay for the copies for the clerk to provide them or (2) provide a copy of the file marked petition to the clerk's office and let them attach the petition to the citation they prepared.

Also at this time, the Ector County and Gregg County clerks absolutely require that you pay for the copies of the petition in the eFiling submission - they will not accept copies from the filer or process server.

As clerks become more comfortable with their legal standing regarding their liability regarding the citation delivery to you, we may begin to see more of them allowing you to pick up the citation and attach your own copies of the petition to the citation.

Some process service companies will physically deliver copies of the petition to the clerk's office for attachment to the newly created citations.