§ 511.010.Generally

Chapter 2 uses a handful of terms over and over — complaint, defendant, person, plaintiff, probable validity — and this section makes sure they carry one consistent meaning throughout. Rather than defining each term where it first appears, the Legislature grouped the definitions into this article and told readers, right at the start, to apply them across the whole chapter.

The qualifier matters: these definitions govern unless the provision or context otherwise requires. That's a safety valve, not an invitation to ignore the definitions casually — it lets a specific section override the general definition only when the section's own language or setting makes the general meaning unworkable.

Practically, this means a term like § 511.080's definition of plaintiff carries into every later section of the chapter — the writ of possession provisions in Article 2, the temporary restraining order provisions in Article 3, and so on — without needing to be repeated each time.