§ 2009.Use

This section is the practical hub of the affidavit rules: it tells a practitioner when an affidavit is an acceptable substitute for live testimony. The list covers a familiar set of situations, verifying that the facts in a pleading or a paper filed in a special proceeding are true, proving that a summons, notice, or other paper was served, supporting a request for a provisional remedy such as an attachment or injunction, examining a witness, obtaining a stay of proceedings, establishing a record of birth in an uncontested matter, and backing up a motion generally.

The closing phrase, and in any other case expressly permitted by statute, keeps the list from being exhaustive. Other codes, the Probate Code among them, authorize affidavits for their own specific purposes, and this section's catalog works alongside those grants rather than displacing them. What ties every listed use together is that none of them asks a court to resolve a contested factual dispute on the strength of one side's untested written word; they are preliminary, procedural, or uncontested matters where the efficiency of an affidavit outweighs the value of live cross-examination.