Q. How do I use Requests for Admission in my dissolution proceeding?
What Are Requests for Admission?
Requests for Admission ("RFA's") can be a useful discovery
tool in family law proceedings because they allow parties in divorce and
partnership litigation to resolve issues one way or another so that no
evidence need be introduced at trial by asking the other party to admit
or deny something. This typically involves establishing that certain documents
are genuine (i.e., a prenuptial agreement entered into before marriage
or a transfer deed or promissory note or copies of documents where original
are missing or destroyed). Once this document is admitted as genuine,
no further foundational evidence needs to be offered to admit the item
into evidence. Other uses include establishing that certain property belongs
to the community estate, or that it is one party's separate property.
Your questions, or statements of fact or law, must either be admitted
or denied by the responding party. If admitted, no further evidence need
be offered on the subject issue at any later hearing; the Family Court
to take what was admitted to as established. Once admitted, no contradicting
evidence can be introduced to disprove it.
Requests for Admission are governed by
California Code of Civil Procedure section 2033.010 and the statutes that follow with that code. We have provided some of
the more important ones on our
Family Code Statutes page.
You are entitled to ask a total of 35 RFA's as a matter of right.
But you can ask as many as you need, as long as they are requested for
a proper purpose, relevant, not overly burdensome, and you also have executed
and supplied the
Declaration for Additional Discovery required by CCP § 2033.050.
There is a Judicial Council form that you can use for RFA's, but it
is not required. I will upload and link to that form shortly. I also provide
my own form that you can modify for your use on our
Free Sample Family Law Forms Portal!
Always Combine RFAs with the Civil Form Interrogatories
Another important use for Admission's Requests is that you can combine
them with
Civil Form Interrogatories, Number 17.1, which requires the responding party to state all facts and evidence that
they know of, and other relevant information, for each RFA which they
refuse to admit. This can flesh out claims and defenses of the other party
that you may be wondering about, and the evidence and witnesses which
the other party claims will support them. The answers to these form interrogatories
may also establish that a denial of an otherwise undisputed fact, or genuine
document, was not in good faith. Often parties will refuse to admit something
that should be admitted, so forcing them to explain what evidence justifies
that refusal helps set up that their refusal is bogus or in bad faith.
One of the chief benefits of RFA's beyond putting to rest matters
that are really not issues (and hence saving the time and money to otherwise
prove or disprove them), is that a failure to admit them in good faith
gives the Court discretion to award the asking party their legal expenses
and costs in producing evidence on those same issues if the Court later
decides at trial that they were not reasonably in dispute.
As with some other types of discovery (interrogatories and production
requests) the responding party has thirty days to answer (plus five more
if you serve them by mail). Make sure you always provide a proof of service
signed by a non party with any type of discovery you serve.
If the other party fails to respond to your Requests for Admission, you
are entitled to file a motion that the requests be deemed admitted. Other
sanctions might be available, like a court finding no evidence challenging
the proposed undisputed items may be offered by the other side in later
proceedings.
The subject of objections to discovery is a complicated one for another
day. Check our search engine to see if I've written about it by the
time you've landed here.
For more information on Family Law discovery tools, click here.
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TWA