ga-law-references

Georgia Law References

NOT LEGAL ADVICE. This skill is a procedural and reference aid, not legal advice. Verify current rules, deadlines, and citations against the authoritative source before relying on anything here. Pair with substantive review by counsel where stakes warrant.

This is the matter-neutral reference hub for Georgia civil practice. It is a pointer index: it tells the other ga- skills where the rule text, statute text, and case authorities live, and gives a curated topic map of the key Georgia authorities. It does not reproduce statutory text — read the cited section in the corpus or at an open source before relying on it.

Corpus layout

references/
├── court-rules/            # Verbatim Georgia court-rule corpus:
│                           #   Uniform Superior Court Rules (USCR)
│                           #   Uniform State Court Rules
│                           #   Uniform Magistrate Court Rules
│                           #   Supreme Court of Georgia rules
│                           #   Court of Appeals rules
├── ga-statutes-debt/       # O.C.G.A. chapters most used in civil,
│                           #   consumer, and family practice
│                           #   (slug retains the legacy "-debt"
│                           #   suffix for path stability; scope is
│                           #   full civil + family — see below)
├── federal-debt-laws/      # FDCPA, FCRA, TILA, ECOA, etc. (symlink
│                           #   into claude-legal-federal-laws)
├── federal-bankruptcy/     # Title 11 U.S.C. (symlink)
└── ucc-model/              # Model UCC Articles 1/2/3/9 (symlink)

The three symlinked directories point into the shared claude-legal-federal-laws plugin; the federal text is not duplicated per state. Georgia-specific text (court-rules/, ga-statutes-debt/) stays in-plugin.

O.C.G.A. chapters carried in ga-statutes-debt/

O.C.G.A.	Subject
Title 9, Ch. 11	Civil Practice Act (pleadings, motions, discovery, judgments)
Title 9, Ch. 3	Limitation of actions (statutes of limitation)
Title 24	Georgia Evidence Code (2013 FRE-modeled)
Title 10, Ch. 1	Fair Business Practices Act (FBPA, Art. 15 Pt. 2)
Title 7, Ch. 3	Georgia Industrial / Installment Loan Act
Title 18, Ch. 4	Garnishment (post-2016 renumbered chapter)
Title 44, Ch. 7	Landlord and tenant (dispossessory + security deposits)
Title 44, Ch. 13	Debtor's exemptions (homestead / personalty)
Title 19	Domestic relations (divorce, support, custody, family violence)
Title 15	Courts (jurisdiction, terms, court organization)
Title 11	Uniform Commercial Code (Georgia enactment)

Curated authority index by topic

Chapter-level pointers only — read the section in the corpus or at an open source for the operative text.

Courts and jurisdiction (Title 15)

• O.C.G.A. § 15-6-8 — Superior Court (general jurisdiction; exclusive over divorce, equity, title to land, felonies).
• O.C.G.A. § 15-7-4 — State Court (limited jurisdiction; civil actions of any amount except the superior-exclusive classes — most debt and tort suits sit here).
• O.C.G.A. § 15-10-2 — Magistrate Court (civil jurisdiction capped at $15,000; dispossessory, garnishment within cap, distress warrants; appeal de novo).

Civil Practice Act (O.C.G.A. Title 9, Ch. 11)

• § 9-11-4 — process; summons and service (incl. § 9-11-4(f) methods and § 9-11-4.1 service by mail / waiver).
• § 9-11-12 — defenses and objections; answer due 30 days (§ 9-11-12(a)); 12(b)(6) motion to dismiss.
• § 9-11-33 / 9-11-34 / 9-11-36 — interrogatories (50-cap incl. subparts), requests for production, requests for admission (deemed admitted if no timely response).
• § 9-11-55 — default judgment (open as of right within 15 days on payment of costs; thereafter only on the (b) showing).
• § 9-11-56 — summary judgment (motion served ≥ 30 days before hearing).

Evidence (O.C.G.A. Title 24)

• § 24-8-803(6) — business-records hearsay exception (the debt-buyer / records-foundation workhorse).
• § 24-9-902(11) — self-authentication of certified domestic business records (custodian affidavit + notice to adverse parties).

Statutes of limitation (O.C.G.A. Title 9, Ch. 3)

• § 9-3-24 — written / simple contract = 6 years.
• § 9-3-25 — open account / oral / implied contract = 4 years.
• § 9-3-26 — catch-all contract limitation = 4 years.
• § 9-3-33 — injury to the person = 2 years (defamation = 1 year; loss of consortium = 4 years).

Consumer / debt (Title 10, Title 7)

• § 10-1-390 et seq. — Fair Business Practices Act (FBPA); prohibition on unfair / deceptive consumer-marketplace acts.
• § 10-1-399 — FBPA private remedy: actual damages, treble damages for intentional violation, attorney fees, and the 30-day pre-suit written demand (§ 10-1-399(b)).
• Title 7, Ch. 3 — Installment Loan Act (loans ≤ $3,000; the only Georgia debt-side licensing regime).

Garnishment (Title 18, Ch. 4)

• § 18-4-4 — process and garnishment period; garnishee answer window.
• § 18-4-5 — wage-garnishment limit (lesser of 25% of disposable earnings or the amount over 30× the federal minimum wage).
• § 18-4-6 — exempt funds (retirement, Social Security, SSI, VA, unemployment, workers' comp, disability).
• § 18-4-15 — defendant's claim / challenge mechanism for asserting an exemption.

Exemptions (Title 44, Ch. 13)

• § 44-13-100 — debtor's exemptions (homestead, vehicle, wildcard, household goods, tools); Georgia has opted out of the federal bankruptcy exemptions (§ 44-13-100(b)).

Family law (Title 19)

• § 19-5-3 — grounds for divorce (12 fault + no-fault "irretrievably broken").
• § 19-6-15 — child support (income-shares model; BCSO table).
• § 19-9-3 — custody (best-interests standard; child election at 14+).
• § 19-13-1 et seq. — Family Violence Act (definition, protective orders).

Landlord-tenant (Title 44, Ch. 7)

• § 44-7-50 — demand for possession + sworn dispossessory affidavit (precondition to a dispossessory).
• § 44-7-51 — summons and service; answer due 7 days from actual service (§ 44-7-51(b)).
• § 44-7-55 — judgment and writ of possession.

Key cases (general civil + family)

Cite with the official reporter and the S.E.2d parallel (Georgia still uses the official Ga. / Ga. App. reporters — there is no public-domain neutral citation).

• Lau's Corp., Inc. v. Haskins, 261 Ga. 491, 405 S.E.2d 474 (1991) — Celotex-style summary judgment; movant may point to the absence of evidence (governs § 9-11-56).
• Stokes v. Stokes, 246 Ga. 765, 273 S.E.2d 169 (1980) — Georgia is an equitable-distribution (not community-property) state for marital property.
• Hill v. American Express, 289 Ga. App. 576, 657 S.E.2d 547 (2008) — credit-card debt is a written contract (6-year limitation under § 9-3-24).
• Nyankojo v. North Star Capital Acquisition, 298 Ga. App. 6, 679 S.E.2d 57 (2009) — debt-buyer must prove an unbroken chain of assignment (the go-to for attacking debt-buyer standing).
• Bowen v. Savoy, 308 Ga. 204, 839 S.E.2d 546 (2020) — the "proper case" prong of § 9-11-55(b) needs no reasonable explanation.

Citation conventions

• Cases: Lau's Corp. v. Haskins, 261 Ga. 491, 405 S.E.2d 474 (1991) (Supreme Court); Nyankojo v. North Star Capital Acquisition, 298 Ga. App. 6, 679 S.E.2d 57 (2009) (Court of Appeals). Official Ga. / Ga. App. reporters plus the S.E.2d regional parallel — Georgia has not adopted a public-domain neutral citation, so always supply the reporter cite.
• Statutes: O.C.G.A. § 9-11-56 (always with §; subsections O.C.G.A. § 10-1-399(b)).
• Court rules: USCR 6.2 (Uniform Superior Court Rules); name the rule set for the others (e.g., "Uniform Magistrate Court Rule __", "Supreme Court of Georgia Rule __").
• Federal: 15 U.S.C. § 1692g(b); 12 C.F.R. § 1006.34.

Online sources

Open verification sources (Georgia has no free official statute-HTML site; the official LexisNexis O.C.G.A. is paywalled and copyrighted, so it is not scraped):

• Statutes (O.C.G.A.):
  • FindLaw — codes.findlaw.com/ga/ (current, scrapeable; primary open mirror for the puller).
  • Justia — law.justia.com/codes/georgia/ (corroborating mirror; note Justia 403s automated fetch, so it is a fallback/manual source, not the automated puller's target).
  • ga.elaws.us/ocga/{title-chapter-section} (usable but can lag; confirm currency against FindLaw).
• Court rules: georgiacourts.gov (and assets.georgiacourts.gov for dated USCR / Uniform Magistrate Court Rule PDFs); Council of Superior Court Judges at cscj.georgiacourts.gov; Supreme Court rules at gasupreme.us/rules/; Court of Appeals rules at gaappeals.gov/court-rules/.
• Opinions: gasupreme.us/opinions/, gaappeals.gov/opinion-search/, and CourtListener (court IDs ga = Supreme Court of Georgia, gactapp = Court of Appeals of Georgia).
• County e-filing portals: PeachCourt (peachcourt.com; Cobb, Gwinnett among others) and Odyssey eFileGA (efilega.tylertech.cloud; Fulton and many others); county-to-portal map at georgiacourts.gov/efile-court-records/.

Legal data APIs

• CourtListener / Legal Data Hunter MCP servers — bundled by the shared claude-legal-federal-laws dependency (its .mcp.json) for live case-law lookup. Use court IDs ga and gactapp to scope to Georgia. These are the runtime path for "look up Georgia case law" — the snapshotted corpus carries statute and rule text, not the full opinion set.
• Puller URL patterns (used by the refresh scripts):
  • Statutes — pull_georgia_statutes.py (to be added): FindLaw (codes.findlaw.com/ga/), with Justia / ga.elaws.us as mirrors.
  • Court rules — pull_georgia_rules.py (to be added): georgiacourts.gov / assets.georgiacourts.gov PDFs plus the appellate-court rule pages.

Composition

Every other ga- skill cites into this corpus for rule numbers, statute sections, and case authorities rather than restating the law itself. In particular:

• ga-fact-check — verifies the citations a draft relies on against this corpus (and the live MCP lookup for cases).
• ga-statewide-format — the pleading-form baseline (O.C.G.A. § 9-11-10 + the Uniform Court Rules indexed here).
• ga-deadlines — time computation (§ 1-3-1 / § 9-11-6) and the § 1-4-1 holiday set; this hub holds the limitation periods it pairs with.
• ga-consumer-debt — the FBPA, Installment Loan Act, garnishment, exemption, and SOL pointers above plus the federal symlinks.
• ga-family-law — the Title 19 domestic-relations pointers.

For the specific filing court, see the venue skills (ga-fulton, ga-cobb, ga-gwinnett, ga-county-courts); for pro se conventions, ga-pro-se.

References

• references/court-rules/ — verbatim Georgia court-rule corpus (USCR, Uniform State Court Rules, Uniform Magistrate Court Rules, Supreme Court & Court of Appeals rules); populated by pull_georgia_rules.py.
• references/ga-statutes-debt/ — O.C.G.A. chapters most relevant to civil, consumer, and family practice; populated by pull_georgia_statutes.py.
• references/federal-debt-laws/ — shared federal-law corpus (symlink).
• references/federal-bankruptcy/ — shared Title 11 corpus (symlink).
• references/ucc-model/ — shared Model UCC text (symlink).