How to Use MyCitations: A Step-by-Step Guide to the California Courts’ Traffic Tool

The official MyCitations site: MyCitations ↗

MyCitations is the California courts’ optional online tool for traffic infractions. Its home page has two options: Request a Fine Reduction, for drivers who cannot afford their ticket, and Request an Online Trial by Declaration, to contest a ticket online. The Judicial Council says ability-to-pay requests can be made through MyCitations in all 58 California superior courts; online trial by declaration is only available in some courts.

What You Can and Cannot Do in MyCitations

• Ask for a lower fine, along with a payment plan, community service, more time to pay, or traffic school if you are eligible (all 58 courts).
• Contest an infraction with an online trial by declaration (only in some courts; as of October 2026 the California Courts list Amador, Imperial, Nevada, Sacramento, San Francisco and Siskiyou).
• The California Courts pages do not describe paying a ticket in MyCitations. To pay, use the payment options on your courtesy notice or your court’s website.
• MyCitations is for infractions, not misdemeanors. Parking and toll notices are handled by the agency that issued them.

Before You Start

• An email address. MyCitations sends the court’s orders and decisions by email, and both options ask you to agree to that.
• Your ticket (citation) number, your court case number, or your driver’s license or ID number.
• For a fine reduction: your total monthly household income, your monthly expenses such as rent, food and transportation, the number of people in your home, and proof of any public benefits. If you get CalFresh, MyCitations has a CalFresh Confirm tool to share proof.
• For an online trial: your statement and all of your evidence, ready to upload.

How to Request a Fine Reduction

1. Go to mycitations.courts.ca.gov and choose Request a Fine Reduction.
2. Read the list of when not to use the tool: if you want to contest the ticket, if you have proof of correction for a fix-it ticket, if the offense is a misdemeanor, or if you do not have an email address or do not agree to get court orders by email.
3. Check the box certifying that you are the defendant, the defendant’s designee or the defendant’s attorney, and continue.
4. Identify your ticket, answer the questions about your income, expenses and household, and share proof of any public benefits.
5. Choose what you want with the reduction: a payment plan, community service, more time to pay, or traffic school if you are eligible.
6. A judicial officer reviews your request, and the court emails its order to the address you gave.

By law, courts must consider at least whether you receive certain public benefits, such as CalFresh, Medi-Cal or SSI, and whether your monthly income is 125% or less of the federal poverty guidelines (Government Code 68645.2). The same law sets what the online tool recommends: a reduction of 50% or more for people who receive those public benefits, and payments of no more than $25 a month for people who qualify for a reduction and ask for a payment plan. The judge still decides each request. You do not have to pay bail or any fines or fees before the court decides, and a court cannot charge an administrative fee for the request (Government Code 68645.2).

If you do not have email or internet access, you can ask on paper with form TR-320 (TR/CR-320), in person or by mail.

Who qualifies and what the court can do. Ability to Pay in California →

How to Request an Online Trial by Declaration

This option works only in courts that offer online trial by declaration. MyCitations says to use it only if your ticket is for infractions only, you want to contest it (plead not guilty), the due date has not passed, and your ticket or courtesy notice does not say you must appear in court. Do not use it if you have already appeared in court, been sentenced or fined, or paid the ticket, or if your evidence is not ready to upload.

1. Go to mycitations.courts.ca.gov and choose Request an Online Trial by Declaration.
2. Check that your ticket fits the list above, check the box certifying that you are the defendant, the defendant’s designee or the defendant’s attorney, and continue.
3. Submit your statement explaining what happened, and upload your evidence.
4. The officer who wrote the ticket can also submit a written statement. A judge reviews both and emails the decision to you.

A court that offers online trials by declaration through MyCitations cannot require bail in advance unless it makes express findings (Government Code 68645.4).

How online trial by declaration works. Online Trial by Declaration (OTBD) →

If Your Court Does Not Offer Online Trials

You can still contest by mail with form TR-205, or at a trial in court.

Fill out the mail-in request. Form TR-205, Box by Box →

Every way to contest, step by step. How to Fight a Traffic Ticket in California →