✓ Law Verified August 2026
A Rhode Island eviction record can block apartment applications for years — often regardless of how the case actually ended. This guide answers the question directly for Rhode Island: whether a sealing law exists here, exactly how to use it if it does, and the real alternatives if it does not. Verified against official Rhode Island sources as of August 2026.
In This Rhode Island Guide:
How the Rhode Island Sealing Law Works
| The law | R.I. Gen. Laws § 34-18-60 (“Sealing and unsealing of court files”), enacted by 2023 S 0912 (Sen. Tiara Mack), effective January 1, 2024 |
| Who qualifies | Only residential eviction cases brought under R.I. Gen. Laws § 34-18-35 (nonpayment of rent), § 34-18-36 (noncompliance with the rental agreement), and § 34-18-38 (termination or expiration of tenancy). Either party — tenant or landlord — may move to seal. The court must grant the motion if it finds ONE of these: (1) the case was dismissed as the result of a motion to dismiss; (2) the case was resolved by stipulation and all terms of the stipulation have been satisfied by the parties; (3) any money judgment against the moving party has been satisfied in full; or (4) the case was dismissed for lack of prosecution after a 5-year period. The court must also find that the moving party gave notice of the motion to all parties in the underlying case, and that this is the only sealing request that party has made under this section in the previous 5 years. A tenant is limited to 1 request every 5 years. |
| Automatic or petition | PETITION. Nothing is sealed automatically in Rhode Island — the tenant (or the landlord) must file a written Motion to Seal plus a sworn Affidavit in Support of Motion to Seal in the same Rhode Island District Court case, and must notify every other party to the eviction. A judge decides the motion; the statute says the court “shall grant” it once the statutory findings are made, but you may still be scheduled for a hearing, so check with your court. |
| Waiting period | The motion must be filed at least 30 days after the appeal period in the eviction case has expired (the District Court’s DC-107 affidavit states the motion is filed 30 days after expiration of the appeal period). Separately, a case dismissed for lack of prosecution qualifies only after a 5-year period. And the moving party must not have made another sealing request under § 34-18-60 within the previous 5 years. |
| Cost | UNVERIFIED — the Rhode Island Judiciary’s District Court Civil Fees and Costs schedule does not publish a separate fee for a motion to seal an eviction record; motions in an already-filed District Court case generally carry no new filing fee. Ask the clerk in your division, and if a fee is charged you may be able to file a motion to proceed in forma pauperis (fee waiver) based on low income. |
Step by Step: Sealing Your Rhode Island Eviction Record
1) Get your eviction case number from the Rhode Island District Court division where the eviction was filed (District Court handles all residential evictions — 6th Division Providence, 2nd Division Newport, 3rd Division Wakefield, 4th Division Warwick).
2) Confirm you fit one of the four grounds — dismissed on a motion to dismiss, stipulation fully satisfied, money judgment paid in full, or dismissed for lack of prosecution after 5 years — and gather proof (satisfaction of judgment, receipts, dismissal order, signed stipulation).
3) Fill out the District Court Motion to Seal and form DC-107, Affidavit in Support of Motion to Seal (revised May 2024), available from courts.ri.gov forms and from the clerk. 4) Sign the DC-107 affidavit in front of a notary — notaries are commonly free or low-cost at banks and public libraries.
5) File the motion and affidavit with the clerk in that same District Court division under the original eviction docket number.
6) Serve/notify all other parties to the eviction (your former landlord and their attorney) — the judge must find you gave notice, so keep a certificate of service. 7) Attend the hearing if one is scheduled and bring your proof. Rhode Island Legal Services (401-274-2652) and the Center for Justice assist tenants with these motions.
What sealing actually does: A granted motion seals the court file in that eviction case, so the case is no longer available for public inspection at the courthouse or through public court record searches — which is what tenant screening companies buy and resell.
In practice that means many tenants stop showing up in screening-company eviction databases going forward, and a landlord searching Rhode Island court records will not find the sealed case.
Important limits: sealing does not erase data that a screening company already pulled and stored before the seal, so you may still need to dispute stale entries directly with the screening bureaus (see below); the file can be unsealed by court order;
and § 34-18-60 does not by its terms give you a statutory right to answer “no record” on a rental application, so do not assume you can deny the case outright — check with your court or a Rhode Island Legal Services attorney before answering a direct question about it.
Why A Rhode Island Eviction Record Follows You — and For How Long
An eviction case becomes a public court record the day it is filed — even if you won, even if it was dismissed, even if you moved out voluntarily before the hearing. Tenant screening companies copy these records in bulk and resell them to landlords, which is how a Rhode Island eviction record from years ago can quietly sink a rental application today.
Under federal reporting rules these records generally stop appearing on screening reports after seven years, but the public court file itself can remain searchable far longer unless it is sealed.
That is why the filing itself, not just the outcome, is what matters — and why sealing laws are spreading state by state. Most landlords never read the court file; they read the one-line summary a screening company sells them. Getting the Rhode Island eviction record sealed, corrected, or accurately described is what changes that one line.
Check Your Rhode Island Eviction Record First
Before filing anything, find out what your Rhode Island eviction record really looks like to a landlord. Search the online case index for the court where the eviction was filed, and request your file from the major tenant screening companies — you are entitled to it.
Tenants are often surprised in both directions: some discover the case they worry about was never reported, others find a case they had forgotten, or one that is not even theirs.
Knowing exactly what appears, and how it is described, tells you whether to pursue sealing, a dispute, or both.
Screening reports are also where errors live. A dismissed case reported as an eviction, an old address matched to the wrong person, or a paid judgment still shown as owing are all fixable — and fixing the report is sometimes faster than any court process in Rhode Island.
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Your Federal Rights Against Tenant Screening Companies
Tenant screening companies are consumer reporting agencies under the federal Fair Credit Reporting Act (15 U.S.C. § 1681 et seq.), and you have rights that apply whether or not your case was sealed.
If you are denied housing, charged a higher deposit, or required a co-signer because of a screening report, the landlord must give you an adverse action notice naming the screening company; you then have 60 days to request a free copy of that report, and you are separately entitled to one free report from each screening company every 12 months.
Dispute anything wrong or outdated in writing directly with the screening company (not just the landlord), attach proof — the sealing order, dismissal order, satisfaction of judgment, or paid receipts — and send it certified mail, return receipt requested, keeping copies of everything.
The company must reinvestigate within 30 days (extended to 45 days if you send additional information during the 30-day window) and must delete or correct information it cannot verify, then send you the written results free of charge.
Most eviction judgments must be dropped after 7 years under § 1681c, and a dismissed case or a case where you won should never be reported as an eviction against you at all.
You can also ask the company to add a 100-word consumer statement to your file, and you can complain to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau at consumerfinance.gov/complaint and to the Rhode Island Attorney General’s Consumer Protection Unit at 401-274-4400.
Suing under the FCRA for a willful or negligent failure to correct is possible, and many tenants recover their attorney’s fees if they win.
Timing matters more than tenants expect. If you are apartment-hunting right now, start the screening-report disputes today — they run on federal deadlines and cost nothing — while any Rhode Island court process moves in parallel. If the move is months away, that is enough time for most sealing petitions, vacated judgments, or corrected reports to finish before a landlord ever pulls your Rhode Island eviction record.
Worth watching in Rhode Island: Rhode Island’s sealing law is narrower than Massachusetts’ 2025 law — there is no automatic sealing, no sealing for no-fault cases as a class, and the once-every-5-years cap is a real constraint, so many tenants should save their one request for the case that is hurting them most.
Pending expansion bills as of the 2026 session: H 8111 (introduced February 27, 2026, referred to House Judiciary, heard March 18, 2026 with supporting testimony from the Center for Justice) and its companion S 3163 (2026 session), which would allow sealing when an eviction is dismissed for a defective complaint and/or lack of jurisdiction of the court, and would allow sealing of a person’s association with an eviction on motion
of a person between 18 and 21 years of age or where a minor was
named in the eviction proceeding — and those specific sealing instances would NOT count against the tenant’s existing one-request-every-5-years right. Earlier versions of the same expansion were filed as H 6378 and S 0511. Neither H 8111 nor S 3163 is verified as enacted as of August 20, 2026 — check the bill status on the General Assembly site before relying on them.
There are no county pilot programs; Rhode Island has no county-level courts, and all residential evictions and sealing motions go through the state District Court.
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Official Rhode Island Sources & Resources
- Rhode Island Courts Self-Help: courts.ri.gov/Courts/districtcourt/Pages/Landlord%20Tenant.a…
- Rhode Island Statute: webserver.rilegislature.gov/Statutes/TITLE34/34-18/34-18-60….
- U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development: hud.gov
- Cornell Legal Information Institute: law.cornell.edu/wex
Taking Control of Your Rhode Island Eviction Record
A Rhode Island eviction record is not a life sentence — it is a document, and documents can be sealed, corrected, or accurately explained. The tenants who struggle longest are usually the ones who never look at what their Rhode Island eviction record actually says, so start by pulling the court file and your screening reports.
Whether Rhode Island offers sealing or only the federal dispute route, acting on the Rhode Island eviction record beats hoping landlords will not check — they almost always do. A short, honest cover letter to a prospective landlord explaining the circumstances can also do real work while the record process runs.
This Rhode Island eviction record guide was last verified against official sources in August 2026. Sealing laws are changing fast — new states pass them every year, so re-check before relying on this page.
More Rhode Island Tenant Rights Guides
- Rhode Island Tenant Rights
- Rhode Island Eviction Process
- Rhode Island Security Deposit Law
- Rhode Island Rent Increase Laws
- Rhode Island Repairs & Habitability
- Breaking a Lease in Rhode Island
- Eviction Timeline Calculator
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Disclaimer: This guide is informational only and is not legal advice. Landlord-tenant laws change and vary by city and county within a state. Verify current rules with your state, your local court, or a free legal-aid office before acting. If you are facing eviction, contact a local tenant attorney or legal-aid organization right away.