Rule 79.1.Electronic filing

What it is. Electronic filing in the Family Court is called “eFile” or “eFiling”: uploading a document from a user's own computer, or from the court's public access computers, through the court's browser-based case management and electronic case filing system known as e-Flex or any system that replaces it. E-Flex accepts documents only in PDF readable by free PDF readers — a deliberate choice of the format nobody has to buy anything to open.

Who must use it. Any civil matter may be initiated by eFiling. In a matter initiated that way, everything an attorney files afterwards is eFiled. The Chief Judge may designate a case, or a whole category of cases, as eFile.

Self-represented litigants. Paper documents presented to the court by pro se litigants in eFile-initiated cases are scanned, converted to PDF and eFiled by the Clerk; the eFiled version is then the original and the paper version is destroyed. This is the provision that matters most. A litigant without a lawyer is not shut out of a case that has gone electronic and is not asked to acquire software or an account to be heard — they hand over paper and the court does the rest.

Signatures and passwords. A Delaware lawyer may authorise nobody to eFile for them except an employee of their firm or a service provider retained to assist. No one may use another person's password, or allow their own to be used. An eFiling by a lawyer, or by someone the lawyer authorised, IS that lawyer's signature under Rule 11 — with everything Rule 11 attaches to a signature. All eFilings must be signed by a member of the Delaware Bar or by a party without an attorney.

Service. Unless otherwise ordered, electronic service under the eFiling rules counts as service under Rule 5, and is treated the same as service by mail for the purpose of adding 3 days to a response period under Rule 6(d).

The surcharge. A technology surcharge is assessed in each eFile case to fund the system, and it is not imposed on filings by state agencies or by indigent parties or their counsel. The money may be spent solely on operating and maintaining the court's case management and eFile system.