Rule Text
A. The declinatory exception and the dilatory exception shall be pleaded prior to or in the answer and, prior to or along with the filing of any pleading seeking relief other than entry or removal of the name of an attorney as counsel of record, extension of time within which to plead, security for costs, or dissolution of an attachment issued on the ground of the nonresidence of the defendant, and in any event, prior to the signing of a default judgment. When both exceptions are pleaded, they shall be filed at the same time, and may be incorporated in the same pleading. When filed at the same time or in the same pleading, these exceptions need not be pleaded in the alternative or in a particular order.
B. The peremptory exception may be pleaded at any stage of the proceeding in the trial court prior to a submission of the case for a decision and may be filed with the declinatory exception or with the dilatory exception, or both.
Amendment history: Acts 1983, No. 60, §1; Acts 1997, No. 1055, §1; Acts 1999, No. 983, §1, eff. July 1, 2000; Acts 2017, No. 419, §1; Acts 2021, No. 174, §1, eff. Jan. 1, 2022.
Plain-English Summary (for reference only — not a substitute for the rule text above)
This summary is not the rule. The rule text controls.
This rule explains when a person can raise certain legal objections during a lawsuit.
If someone wants to argue that the court is the wrong place for the case or that something about the way the case was filed is improper, they need to raise these objections early. These are called "declinatory" and "dilatory" exceptions. A person must bring them up before answering the lawsuit, and before asking the court for most other kinds of help. The main exceptions to this are simple requests, like adding or removing a lawyer from the case, asking for more time to respond, asking for security for court costs, or ending an attachment placed on property because the defendant lives out of state. No matter what, these objections must be raised before the court signs a default judgment against the person. If someone wants to raise both types of objections, they must do it at the same time, though they don't have to be listed in any particular order.
There is one type of objection that works differently. This is called a "peremptory" exception, and it deals with more serious problems, like whether the case has any legal basis at all. A person can raise this type of objection at almost any point in the case, right up until the case is handed to the judge for a final decision. It can also be combined with the other types of objections if someone wants to raise more than one issue at once.
