Divorce Lawyer: Pleadings in Louisiana

Louisiana uses some interesting forms of pleadings that can be very beneficial and helpful to a family law attorney. In another words, there are some ways to make the practice of law more efficient and less expensive, generally, by maximizing the various types of pleadings that can be requested of a court in order to make it possible to move along the case expeditiously. This is not to say that this is what you have to do. As an attorney, you have a number of various options of what it is that you think should be done. If you feel that a different solution is better, then you will not always be necessarily bound by following a particular type of procedure to make things go quicker.

In Louisiana, there are summary proceedings. This allows for litigation to proceed rapidly (at least, the design of this type of civil procedure is for litigation and law to be done much quicker than ordinary pleadings). The way this makes a court case go faster is that upon filing of the pleading it can be possible to set a court date immediately or relatively quickly. This means that the parties may not have to wait the ordinary amount of time for the respondents or defendants to answer the original pleading in order to then move for a court date, provided that discovery has been done and that the matter is set for trial.

This is called in Louisiana summary procedure and the way that this is normally employed is by having a rule within an order attached to a pleading. In other words the divorce lawyer writes the pleading and then attaches an order for the judge to sign after the pleading, and this is attached to the pleading. In the order it contains what is called a rule to show cause which is a way of saying why a party should not show up to court to show why you should not be granted the relief that you are seeking from the court.

It is possible, however, for these rules to be continued and have the litigation continue, even for years. This depends on the nature of the case and the facts and allegations and complexity of the law before the Court. But for relatively simple matters it is the hope of the law that such matters can be moved relatively quickly.

The reason that this applies to a divorce lawyer is that Louisiana law specifically makes it possible to use this type of summary procedure in matters that are incidental to the end of the marriage. The law defines the word incidental as things such as interim spousal support, final style, support community property, child custody, child support etc.

As stated earlier, it is not a requirement necessarily that a divorce lawyer actually use this type of procedure that allows litigation to proceed faster than otherwise. It is just that this is one more tool that an attorney has in order to help resolve their client’s matter as quickly, efficiently as possible in order to zealously guard their clients’ interest.