§ 140A.056.Compliance with Demand

Two sentences, and together they decide what happens between the demand and the ruling.

Subsection (a): a person served shall comply with the terms of the demand unless otherwise provided by court order.

Only a court can excuse compliance. A recipient who considers the demand improper cannot decline; the remedy is the petition, and until a court rules, the demand stands.

Subsection (b) makes the petition worth filing. The time for compliance wholly or partly does not run during the pendency of any petition to modify or set the demand aside.

Without that, a challenge would be pointless — the return date would pass while the court considered it, and the recipient would be in default before winning.

The proviso is the operative limit: the petitioner shall comply with any portions of the demand not sought to be modified or set aside.

So the suspension is partial, matching the challenge. Objecting to three requests out of forty stops the clock on those three; the other thirty-seven remain due on the original date.

That closes the obvious abuse. A recipient cannot file a narrow objection and treat the whole demand as suspended while the case is pending.

It also shapes how objections are drafted. A petitioner who wants more time on everything must find a ground that reaches everything, and must be able to defend it against the good-faith presumption.