ga-statewide-format

Georgia Statewide Court Document Formatting

NOT LEGAL ADVICE. This skill assists with drafting and formatting only. Verify against the current Georgia Civil Practice Act (O.C.G.A. Title 9, Chapter 11), the Uniform Rules of the filing court, and any judge's standing order before submitting any document.

Use these conventions whenever drafting a paper to be filed in a Georgia trial court — a Superior Court, a State Court, or a Magistrate Court. Georgia has no single strict statewide pleading-paper rule fixing margins, font, and line spacing. Instead, the form of a Georgia court document flows from the Georgia Civil Practice Act — chiefly O.C.G.A. § 9-11-10 (form of pleadings: caption and numbered paragraphs), O.C.G.A. § 9-11-7 (pleadings allowed and their designations), O.C.G.A. § 9-11-8 (general rules of pleading), O.C.G.A. § 9-11-11 (signing), and O.C.G.A. § 9-11-5 (service and filing of subsequent papers, including the certificate of service) — together with the Uniform Superior Court Rules (USCR) and their parallels, the Uniform State Court Rules and the Uniform Magistrate Court Rules. Electronic filing runs under USCR 36 and the statewide e-filing standards.

Pull the verbatim rule and statute text from the ga-law-references corpus at ../ga-law-references/references/court-rules/ and ../ga-law-references/references/ga-statutes-debt/ before relying on any specific deadline, service add-on, or form figure — those values live in the rule text and never drift here.

Governing rules

• O.C.G.A. § 9-11-10 — Form of pleadings.
  • (a) Caption. Every pleading contains a caption stating the name of the court, the county, the title of the action, the file number, and a designation of the pleading as provided in § 9-11-7(a). In the complaint the title of the action names all the parties; in later pleadings it is sufficient to name the first party on each side with an appropriate indication of other parties ("et al.").
  • (b) Numbered paragraphs; separate counts. All averments of claim or defense are made in numbered paragraphs, each limited so far as practicable to a single set of circumstances. Each claim founded on a separate transaction and each separate defense is stated in a separate count where separation aids clarity.
• O.C.G.A. § 9-11-7 — Pleadings allowed; designations (complaint, answer, reply, etc.).
• O.C.G.A. § 9-11-8 — General rules of pleading: a short and plain statement of the claim showing entitlement to relief; relief demanded; alternative and inconsistent pleading permitted.
• O.C.G.A. § 9-11-11 — Signing of pleadings. Every pleading is signed by the party's attorney of record (or by the party if self-represented), with the signer's address. There is no general requirement that pleadings be verified or accompanied by affidavit except where a specific statute or rule requires it (certain equitable and extraordinary actions). Confirm whether your particular action carries a verification requirement before relying on the general rule.
• O.C.G.A. § 9-11-5 — Service and filing of pleadings and other papers subsequent to the original complaint, and the certificate of service (see below).
• Uniform Superior Court Rules (USCR) govern practice in the Superior Courts; the Uniform State Court Rules parallel them in the State Courts, and the Uniform Magistrate Court Rules govern Magistrate Court. USCR 36 governs electronic filing.

Paper and legibility

Georgia does not impose a single statewide font / margin / spacing rule for pleadings. The marketplace applies a clean, e-filing-ready baseline by default, since no Georgia rule displaces it:

Item	Baseline (confirm local rules)
Paper / ink	US Letter, 8½ × 11 in., black ink on white
Sides	Single-sided
Font	A legible serif — Times New Roman 12 pt — or Arial 12 pt
Line spacing	Double-spaced body; single-spacing permitted for block quotes, captions, and signature blocks
Margins	1 inch on all four sides
Caption	Court name + county centered above the party block
Document title	Centered ALL-CAPS heading; also carried in the footer
Page numbers	Each page numbered; Page X of Y in the footer

Local rules of a specific court (and a judge's standing order) may add page limits on motions and briefs, chambers-copy requirements, and exhibit-tabbing conventions. scripts/format-check.py validates a generated .docx against this baseline and flags departures.

Line numbering (pleading paper) — applied BY DEFAULT

Apply continuous line numbering down the left margin of every generated Georgia pleading. Line numbers count every body line and restart on each page.

The Civil Practice Act and the Uniform Rules do not themselves require line numbering, and a Georgia document filed without line numbers is rule-compliant. But line-numbered pleading paper is the universal convention across this marketplace: it lets the court and opposing counsel cite an exact location ("page 4, lines 12–15") and never harms a Georgia filing. Apply it by default to every complaint, motion, response, affidavit, declaration, notice, and proposed order. Exhibits and attachments are exempt.

For programmatically generated .docx documents, apply line numbering through the section's lineNumbers property:

import { LineNumberRestartFormat } from "docx";

sections: [{
  properties: {
    page: { /* size + margins */ },
    lineNumbers: {
      countBy: 1,                                // number every line
      restart: LineNumberRestartFormat.NEW_PAGE, // restart 1.. each page
    },
  },
  // ...
}]

This emits <w:lnNumType w:countBy="1" w:restart="newPage"/> into the section's <w:sectPr>. The numbers render in the left margin and do not shift the text margin.

Do NOT set start explicitly. An explicit start: 1 renders off by one in LibreOffice (the first body line shows "2"). Omit start — it defaults to 1 in OOXML.

If you use a two-section page-1 layout (a deeper top margin to seat the caption, then a normal continuation section), set lineNumbers on BOTH sections, or numbering stops at the section break.

Required footer (mandatory on every generated document)

Every generated document MUST carry a running footer on every page:

• Left: a short document identifier — typically [Document title] — Civil Action File No. [number] (e.g., Motion to Dismiss — Civil Action File No. ____________). Keep it to a single line so it never wraps; this places the title at the bottom of each page.
• Right: Page X of Y, where X is the current page number and Y is the total page count. Use Word's PAGE and NUMPAGES fields — never a static number.
• Font: matches the body font family, may be slightly smaller (10 pt).
• Alignment: a right-aligned tab stop at 9,360 DXA (6.5") places the page counter flush right while the title stays flush left.

The footer runs continuously from page 1 through the last exhibit page — do not restart or suppress pagination anywhere.

Margin rule (double vertical line) — applied BY DEFAULT

Draw a double vertical rule — two thin parallel lines (~0.75 pt each, with a ~7 pt gap between them) — down the left margin between the line numbers and the body text. It is the standard companion to line-numbered pleading paper. Like line numbering, no Georgia rule requires it, but it is universal convention across this marketplace. Apply it by default to every line-numbered pleading; exhibits and attachments are exempt.

Implement it as two independent full-height line shapes anchored in the page header, so they repeat on every page — not as an OOXML double page border, whose style couples the inter-line gap to the line weight (widening the gap thickens both lines into heavy bars).

Draw each line as a thin filled rectangle (VML v:rect). One shape per <w:pict> — multiple <v:rect> elements in a single <w:pict> will not all render; each rectangle needs its own <w:pict> inside its own <w:r> run.

docx-js has no first-class API for header-anchored VML shapes. Add them with the docx skill's unpack → edit → pack workflow: generate the file with docx-js (give each section an empty Header so a word/header1.xml part exists, and keep the lineNumbers section property from above), then rewrite the header XML and repack:

python scripts/office/unpack.py out.docx unpacked/
#   ... inject the rule into unpacked/word/header*.xml (helper below) ...
python scripts/office/pack.py unpacked/ out.docx --original out.docx

Inside each unpacked/word/header*.xml, declare the VML namespace on the root <w:hdr> and add the two runs — one v:rect per <w:pict> per <w:r> — inside the header paragraph. A document can have several header parts (first-page / even / default, or one per section); add the runs to each distinct word/header*.xml, giving every v:rect a unique id. This stdlib helper (no python-docx) does it and is idempotent:

import pathlib, re

def _runs(i):
    outer = ('<w:r><w:pict><v:rect id="VRuleOuter%d" '
             'style="position:absolute;margin-left:60pt;margin-top:21.6pt;'
             'width:0.75pt;height:748.8pt;'
             'mso-position-horizontal-relative:page;'
             'mso-position-vertical-relative:page;z-index:-251658240" '
             'fillcolor="black" stroked="f"/></w:pict></w:r>') % i
    return outer + (outer.replace('VRuleOuter%d' % i, 'VRuleInner%d' % i)
                         .replace('margin-left:60pt', 'margin-left:67pt'))

word = pathlib.Path('unpacked/word')

# 1. Double rule: one set of shapes per distinct header part (unique ids).
for i, hdr in enumerate(sorted(word.glob('header*.xml'))):
    xml = hdr.read_text(encoding='utf-8')
    if 'VRuleOuter' in xml:                                   # idempotent
        continue
    if 'xmlns:v=' not in xml:
        xml = re.sub(r'(<w:hdr\b)',
                     r'\1 xmlns:v="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:vml"', xml, count=1)
    xml = xml.replace('</w:p>', _runs(i) + '</w:p>', 1)       # first header para
    hdr.write_text(xml, encoding='utf-8')

# 2. Keep line numbers off header/footer text.
for f in list(word.glob('header*.xml')) + list(word.glob('footer*.xml')):
    xml = f.read_text(encoding='utf-8')
    xml = re.sub(r'(<w:pPr(?:\s[^>]*)?>)(?!<w:suppressLineNumbers/>)',
                 r'\1<w:suppressLineNumbers/>', xml)
    xml = re.sub(r'(<w:p(?:\s[^>]*)?>)(?!<w:pPr)',
                 r'\1<w:pPr><w:suppressLineNumbers/></w:pPr>', xml)
    f.write_text(xml, encoding='utf-8')

The <w:lnNumType> line-numbering element is already emitted by docx-js's lineNumbers section property (above), so the patch only touches the header / footer parts.

Geometry (US Letter, 1-inch margins, line-number distance 360 twips = ¼″): body text starts at 72 pt and the line-number gutter at ~54 pt, so the two rules at margin-left 60 pt and 67 pt sit ~7 pt apart, clear of both. The gap is the difference of the two values; margin-top:21.6pt + height:748.8pt spans the full page height; width:0.75pt is the line weight.

Verify with python scripts/office/validate.py out.docx then python scripts/office/soffice.py --headless --convert-to pdf out.docx; confirm two thin parallel lines with a clear gap between the numbers and the text on every page and that the header / footer text is not line-numbered. Then open the .docx in Microsoft Word, where VML renders slightly differently and the output must still be correct.

Caption structure (O.C.G.A. § 9-11-10(a))

A Georgia caption carries (1) the name of the court and the county, centered at the top; (2) the party block with the party designations; (3) the file number — labeled "Civil Action File No."; and (4) the title of the document. The court identifier is centered and in ALL CAPS:

                  IN THE SUPERIOR COURT OF [COUNTY] COUNTY
                            STATE OF GEORGIA

JANE DOE,                          )
                                   )
       Plaintiff,                  )
                                   )    Civil Action
v.                                 )    File No. ____________
                                   )
ACME COLLECTIONS, LLC,             )
                                   )
       Defendant.                  )

The court identifier takes one of these forms (confirm the exact court name against the venue skill):

• Superior Court: IN THE SUPERIOR COURT OF [COUNTY] COUNTY, STATE OF GEORGIA (general jurisdiction — divorce, equity, title to land, felonies, and all civil matters not exclusively elsewhere).
• State Court: STATE COURT OF [COUNTY] COUNTY (or IN THE STATE COURT OF [COUNTY] COUNTY, STATE OF GEORGIA) — limited jurisdiction but no civil dollar ceiling; most debt-collection and tort suits are filed here. See ga-state-court.
• Magistrate Court: IN THE MAGISTRATE COURT OF [COUNTY] COUNTY, STATE OF GEORGIA — small-claims and dispossessory matters within the statutory civil cap. See ga-magistrate.

The caption elements in order

1. Court and county. The court name and county centered at the top of the page, with STATE OF GEORGIA on the line below (or appended to the court line). Match the court to the venue skill.
2. Party block (left side). The parties stacked with their designations, separated by a v.:
   • Plaintiff / Defendant in general civil actions;
   • Petitioner / Respondent in divorce, family-law, and most special proceedings. In the complaint, name all parties (§ 9-11-10(a)); in later pleadings, naming the first party on each side with "et al." is sufficient.
3. File number (right side, opposite the party block). Labeled Civil Action File No. ____________ — left blank on an initial complaint (the clerk assigns it on filing) and populated on every subsequent paper. A column of right parentheses ) conventionally divides the party block from the file-number block.
4. Document title. A centered ALL-CAPS heading below the caption (e.g., PLAINTIFF'S COMPLAINT or MOTION TO DISMISS), and restated in the footer so it sits at the bottom of every page.

Numbered paragraphs and the body

Under O.C.G.A. § 9-11-10(b), all averments are made in numbered paragraphs, each limited so far as practicable to a single set of circumstances. Number with an Arabic numeral, a period, and a tab. State separate causes of action in separate counts where separation aids clarity. Under § 9-11-8 the body is a short and plain statement of the claim; alternative and inconsistent pleading is permitted.

Initiating pleading and responsive pleading — terminology

• The initiating pleading is the Complaint (§ 9-11-7).
• The responsive pleading is the Answer, which raises defenses and any compulsory counterclaim. See ga-first-30-days.
• The pleadings allowed and their designations are fixed by § 9-11-7(a) — match the caption designation to the pleading type.

Signing (O.C.G.A. § 9-11-11) and the signature block

Under § 9-11-11 every pleading is signed by at least one attorney of record in the attorney's individual name (or by the party if self-represented), and must state the signer's address. A licensed attorney includes the Georgia Bar No.:

                                   /s/ [Name]
                                   [Name]
                                   Georgia Bar No. ________
                                   [Firm name]
                                   [Street address]
                                   [City, GA  ZIP]
                                   Tel: (###) ###-####
                                   Email: [email protected]
                                   Attorney for [Party]

Self-represented filers omit the Georgia Bar No. and identify as pro se:

                                   /s/ [Name]
                                   [Name]
                                   [Street address]
                                   [City, GA  ZIP]
                                   Tel: (###) ###-####
                                   Email: [email protected]
                                   [Party], Pro Se

There is no general verification requirement under § 9-11-11 — most pleadings need only the signature, not a notarized verification — but certain equitable and extraordinary actions require verification by statute or rule; confirm before omitting one. See ga-pro-se for the full self-represented drafting framework.

Certificate of service (O.C.G.A. § 9-11-5)

Every pleading and paper subsequent to the original complaint must be served on the other parties under § 9-11-5 and carry a certificate of service. Place it at the foot of the document:

                   CERTIFICATE OF SERVICE

I certify that on [date] I served a true and correct copy of the
foregoing [Document Title] on all parties of record in accordance
with O.C.G.A. § 9-11-5:

  [Opposing party / counsel name]
  [Address / email]
  by [the court's electronic-filing/e-service system (PeachCourt /
      Odyssey eFileGA) / statutory overnight or U.S. first-class
      mail, postage prepaid / email / hand delivery as permitted by
      O.C.G.A. § 9-11-5].

                                   /s/ [Signer name]
                                   [Signer name]

Section 9-11-5 prescribes the permitted methods of service for subsequent papers. The original complaint is served by summons under O.C.G.A. § 9-11-4 (personal service, service on an agent, or the statutory alternatives including service by publication) — not by § 9-11-5. See ga-first-30-days.

Filing mechanics: e-filing (USCR 36; PeachCourt / Odyssey eFileGA)

Georgia electronic filing is governed by USCR 36 and is handled through county-dependent portals — chiefly PeachCourt and Odyssey eFileGA (the platform varies by county; check the filing county's posture). E-filing of civil matters is mandatory in many counties pursuant to the statewide e-filing mandate.

• Confirm which portal your filing county uses before assembling a packet — it differs county to county.
• Some portals auto-generate intake documents (case-initiation form, summons, sheriff's entry of service) and, in domestic cases, auto-attach a standing order — confirm against the venue skill.
• Self-represented filers may e-file where the county permits; otherwise file by paper at the clerk's window. Confirm the venue's posture.

See the venue skills and ga-file-packet for the full e-filing workflow.

Citation format

Georgia legal citation follows the Georgia appellate conventions (Bluebook-based). Common forms:

• Statutes: O.C.G.A. § 9-11-10 — always use the § symbol for Georgia statutes.
• Uniform Rules: USCR 6.2 (no section symbol for rules); cite the Uniform State Court Rules and Uniform Magistrate Court Rules by their own numbering.
• Supreme Court of Georgia: Smith v. Jones, 308 Ga. 204, 839 S.E.2d 651 (2020).
• Court of Appeals of Georgia: Doe v. Roe, 350 Ga. App. 123, 828 S.E.2d 456 (2019).
• Regional reporter: cite the South Eastern Reporter (S.E.2d / S.E.) in parallel with the official Ga. / Ga. App. reporter.
• Federal statutes: 15 U.S.C. § 1692g.

Italicize case names (including v.). See ga-fact-check for citation verification against the corpus.

Producing documents programmatically

For .docx generation, use the docx npm package. Key points:

• Set page size explicitly to US Letter (12,240 × 15,840 DXA) — the library defaults to A4.
• Use Times New Roman at size: 24 (half-points = 12 pt), or Arial 12 pt, with double line spacing in the body.
• Apply uniform 1,440 DXA margins to all four sides on every section.
• Build the caption with the court name + county centered at the top, a )-divided party-block / file-number layout, and Civil Action File No. ____________ on the right.
• Build the footer with a right-aligned tab stop at 9,360 DXA and use PageNumber.CURRENT / PageNumber.TOTAL_PAGES for "Page X of Y"; carry the document title at the left so it sits at the bottom of each page.
• Apply the lineNumbers section property above (omit start); set it on every section if you use a two-section page-1 layout.

Run scripts/format-check.py on the generated .docx to validate the baseline.

Composition

• For Fulton County courts: ga-fulton
• For Cobb County courts: ga-cobb
• For Gwinnett County courts: ga-gwinnett
• For State Court venue and the no-dollar-ceiling civil docket: ga-state-court
• For Magistrate Court small-claims / dispossessory matters: ga-magistrate
• For other counties' courts: ga-county-courts
• For drafting specific document types: ga-draft-motion, ga-draft-declaration, ga-draft-note, ga-draft-order
• For pro se conventions: ga-pro-se
• For pre-filing QC: ga-quality-check

References

• references/templates/declaration.md — declaration / affidavit with numbered paragraphs and exhibits
• references/templates/motion.md — motion scaffold with caption, body, signature block, and certificate of service
• references/templates/notice-of-hearing.md — notice placing a motion on the court's calendar
• references/templates/proposed-order.md — proposed order for judge signature
• references/caption-format.md — caption structure with the O.C.G.A. § 9-11-10(a) layout and docx-js recipe
• references/certificate-of-service.md — § 9-11-5 certificate of service forms and service methods
• references/citation-format.md — Georgia citation conventions