As a contractor in BC, a customer owe us a debt of $48,000…

Hello:

This may be possible. If you have more than one agreement or amount owing, you can sue on each individual debt separately, and as long as each was less than $25,000, you can proceed in small claims. So if you had different projects, and billed him separately for those, then you may be able to avoid going to the superior court. It would not matter in that case if the parties are the same - as it is separate agreements that give rise to each lawsuit, each of which is under the $25,000 threshold.

But if all the projects were just billed together, and there is one overall amount outstanding which is just a cumulative amount, but all one under one umbrella contract or agreement, then no, you could not split that up. This would be considered an abuse of process, plus once you sue to recover payment on the contract the court would be unable to make a ruling for payment again on the same contract, even if each amount is under the maximum amount for small claims court. The court would have already made a ruling on the point, and would be precluded from making any further rulings, based on a legal principle called "res judicata".