Drafting, Serving, and Filing Initial pleadings as Respondent

For very first steps when we get any new custody/divorce action, see: New Divorce or Custody/PT – Initial Steps (New Client Checklist) – K|H Law Wiki

INITIAL PLEADINGS – IF WE ARE RESPONDENT

Drafting Initial Documents – We need to prepare the answer and counter petition and certificate of representation. The deadline to serve this on the opposing party or opposing attorney is based on when the client was served with the Petition. In divorces, it is due 30 days from that date and in custody/paternity cases it is 21 days from that date.

It is crucial to make sure we are certain of the actual date of service. Sometimes when the clients say they were “served with paperwork” they were actually served, like a process server came and handed them the documents. In that case, we have to know the date they were handed the paperwork.

In other situations, they were mailed the documents with a letter and acknowledgment of service. Being mailed documents does NOT mean they were served. To be served, they would need to have either been handed the documents, or sign and send back the document withing this packet (it’s page 3) this is a packet that was mailed to a person who then called to retain us upon receiving this. they said they were “served” with divorce papers, but they weren’t

Review / Approval / Signature – Once we have the documents done and approved by the attorney, we will upload & share the Answer & Counter Petition to mycase for client to review and sign electronically. If there are any errors, we will fix those. If there are questions the client has, we will answer those prior to the client signing the document. Depending on if there are changes or questions, this usually takes 1-3 days.

Serving / Filing Initial Documents – Once all the initial documents are drafted and the client has signed the Counter Petition, we then need to serve the opposing party. There are a few ways to do this depending on the scenario:

1. If the case if filed with the court, efile the document on OPA
2. If the case is NOT filed with the court, you need to serve the A&CP on OPA/OPP:
   1. Email: Emailing is not proper service, but if there’s an OPA on the case, you can generally email the docs without issue. Email the document to OPA, tell them you are emailing them the answer & counter petition in lieu of formally serving them but if they would like you to formally serve them, they should let us know.
   2. Fax: You can also fax the document with an affidavit of fax to the OPA and this is considered proper service
   3. Mail: You can mail the documents to OPA/OPP with an affidavit of mail and this is considered proper service
3. If the case is NOT filed with the Court, but you want to get the case filed with the Court, you can start a new case by filing the A&CP, Cert of Rep, Conf Info Form, and Affidavit of fax/mail. You DO NOT have to wait for Petitioner to file their initial pleadings first.