Rule 3:8.Answers, Pleas, Demurrers and Motions.

A defendant’s clock starts running at service. The response is due within 21 days after service of the summons and complaint, or, when service by waiver was timely requested under Code § 8.01-286.1, within 60 days after the waiver request was sent (90 days if the defendant was addressed outside Virginia). If the only pleading a defendant files is an answer, that answer itself must land within whichever of those periods applies. But an answer isn’t the only option: other responsive pleadings — a demurrer, a plea, a motion to dismiss, a motion for a bill of particulars, a motion craving oyer, or a written motion asserting a preliminary defense under Code § 8.01-276 — are also available, and each one responds only to the specific count or counts it addresses. Whatever form the answer takes, it must respond to the complaint’s individual paragraphs; a general denial of the whole complaint, or a plea of the general issue, isn’t allowed.

Once a defendant files an initial response, the door narrows. A defendant can’t file a further demurrer, plea, or motion under this rule without leave of court for good cause, unless subsection (b) or some other rule or statute expressly allows it at a later time without leave.

Subsection (b) covers what happens after the court rules on those initial motions. When the court overrules all the demurrers, pleas, and motions a defendant filed as a responsive pleading, that defendant must file an answer within 21 days of the ruling, or within whatever other time the court sets, unless an answer has already been filed. If the court grants a motion craving oyer, the defendant’s answer or other responsive pleading is due 21 days after the plaintiff files the requested document, unless an answer or other response has already been filed. And if the court overrules a motion objecting to personal jurisdiction or defective process that was the defendant’s sole initial responsive pleading, the answer or other responsive pleading is due within 21 days after that ruling, or as the court otherwise prescribes.