Rule 5.301 Presumptions in civil cases generally

This rule keeps things simple. It says the state's evidence rules don't change any existing laws about presumptions in civil cases. A presumption is a legal assumption the law makes until someone proves otherwise, like assuming a mailed letter was received unless proven it wasn't.

In practice, this means courts keep using whatever presumption laws already existed before these evidence rules were written. Nothing about how presumptions work in civil lawsuits gets changed, added to, or taken away by this set of rules. If you're dealing with a presumption in your case, you need to look at the specific law that creates it, not this rule, to understand how it works and what it means for your situation.