Iowa procedural guides

Plain-English guides to the Iowa Rules of Civil Procedure, each one tied to the rules it relies on. Every rule named in a guide has its own page with the official text.

• Responding to an Iowa petition: 20 days, and ten days' warning before defaultIowa R. Civ. P. 1.303 gives 20 days after service of the original notice and petition to serve a motion or answer — and no default may be entered without ten days' written notice of intent to seek it.
• Setting aside an Iowa default judgment: sixty days, and check whether you got the ten-day noticeIowa Rule 1.977 gives only 60 days to set aside a default judgment — but Rule 1.972 requires ten days' written notice of intent before a default can even be applied for.
• The Iowa motion to compel: if nobody resists it, the court can grant it unheardIowa Rule 1.517 lets the court grant an unresisted motion to compel without a hearing, and requires every such order to warn that non-compliance may bring sanctions.
• The Iowa pre-answer motion: you get one, and it must say how the pleading failsIowa Rule 1.421 permits only one pre-answer motion attacking a pleading, requires every available ground to be in it, and waives anything left out.
• Iowa summary judgment: file 60 days before trial, and the resistance is due in 15Iowa rule 1.981 requires the motion at least 60 days before trial, a resistance within 15 days that must include a statement of disputed facts, and a hearing no sooner than 20 days after filing.
• Iowa temporary injunctions: the petition has to disclose who already said noIowa requires a petition for a temporary injunction to state whether the same relief was already refused by another court, requires a refusal to be endorsed on the petition, and sets the bond at 125 percent of probable liability.
• Iowa subpoenas: the radius is fifty miles, not a hundredIowa halves the familiar hundred-mile subpoena radius to fifty, and a non-party's failure to obey a subpoena that reaches beyond it must be excused without any motion to quash.

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