Filing at the RDC in Full — and the Disclosure

If resolution fails, file properly. This episode is the second branch in full: what filing at Dubai's Rental Dispute Centre actually involves — the documents, the translation, the fee, the settlement stage, the hearing, and enforcement. No mystery, and no discouragement. The RDC decides disputes. Most disagreements don't need deciding — they need resolving. Yours might.

Fourteen episodes have talked about the step before you file. This one is about filing, and it starts with respect: the Rental Dispute Centre is a purpose-built forum that handles this city's rental conflicts with a speed most court systems would envy. Nothing in this series has been about avoiding it. The sequence exists to make sure that when you arrive here, you arrive on purpose, with a file, having already tried the cheaper branch. If that is you — letter sent, window expired, position pressed — then this is what happens next.

First — the door

You will need the tenancy contract and the Ejari registration — the gate from last episode, now literal. Identity documents; the title deed on the landlord's side. And the evidence file: the notices, the payment records, the photographs, the correspondence — the hierarchy from episode twenty-six, assembled in order. Documents not in Arabic will need legal translation, which is a real cost and a real timeline: budget for it, and translate the documents that carry the case, not the entire thread of everything ever sent.

Second — the fee

The number this series gave you in episode seventeen: 3.5 per cent of the annual rent, with a floor of AED 500 and a cap of AED 20,000. It is paid to open the case, with small fixed add-ons on top. And one detail in the schedule says everything about the Centre's design: settle at the conciliation stage and half the basic fee is refunded. The forum prices resolution below adjudication — on purpose. If you have followed the sequence, that number is being spent after a cheaper attempt failed, which is exactly the order the arithmetic recommends.

Third — the settlement stage

Pay attention to this stage, because it is the quiet vindication of everything this series has argued: your case does not go straight to a judge. It goes first to the Centre's own settlement stage, where the matter is worked toward amicable resolution before adjudication. The forum itself is built resolution-first. If you arrive holding a structured letter the other side ignored, this stage is where it pays its second dividend — you are the party who tried, on paper, with dates, and settlement discussions have a way of resolving in favour of the party holding that file. Many matters end right here, inside the RDC, without a hearing.

Fourth — adjudication, judgment, execution

If settlement fails: adjudication. Hearings are efficient, evidence-led, and largely decided on the documents — files, not performances. Then judgment, and if you win, execution: the stage that turns paper into money or possession, and the stage episode twenty-four warned you to think about before filing, not after. A judgment is an instruction, and instructions need someone present to obey them. Timelines across the whole process run weeks to months depending on the matter — fast by any judicial standard, slower than a letter answered in ten days.

The disclosure

Now the disclosure, stated as plainly as we know how. The filing service at eviction.ae — case preparation, filing, and representation through the RDC process — is operated by the same company that operates this desk and dispute.ae. If the honest read at the resolution stage says file, that is where we would do it, and you should weigh that recommendation knowing exactly who makes it. We structured it this way deliberately and we say it in the audio, not just the small print, because a process that hides its own interest does not deserve your trust — and because the numbers keep us honest: the AED 2,499 attempt that resolves your dispute kills our filing fee. We built the cheap product to cannibalise the expensive one. That is the design.

So: the sequence, complete. Attempt structured resolution at a fixed fee below the cost of filing. If resolution fails, file properly — and now you know precisely what "properly" contains. If the honest answer is neither, walk away — episode twenty-nine is that branch in full. And remember the asymmetry that ordered the sequence in the first place: you can always file after trying to resolve. You cannot un-file. Escalation is a decision, not a default; this episode exists so that when you decide it, you decide it informed.

Next episode first, though — the one where we tell some of you not to hire anyone at all. Including us.

Thanks for listening. The full transcript is at transcript.ae. For pre-legal dispute support, dispute.ae is where that work is done.