Rule 36.3.Caption

Rule 36.3 requires a caption on every document filed in superior court, and that caption has to say what the document is — a motion to dismiss, an answer, a complaint for divorce, a petition for change of name. It is a small requirement with an outsized payoff: clerks, judges, and opposing parties should be able to open a file and understand what each paper does without reading the whole thing.

This matters most in busy courthouses handling thousands of filings. A vague or missing caption slows everyone down — the clerk has to guess where a document belongs, and a judge flipping through a file cannot tell a discovery motion from a motion for summary judgment without reading past the first page. The caption is the label that lets the rest of the system work efficiently.

The rule ties directly into how Rule 36 organizes court records more broadly: files are sorted by type of case and identified by a set sequence, and an accurate caption is what lets a document land in the right place within that system.