FL-180 : The Court Acquired Jurisdiction Of The Respondent On

This article explains what date you should put on the FL-180 on number 3 where it says, The Court acquired jurisdiction of the Respondent on (Date)

So we know the court is looking for a date, but what date?

You can see that there are 2 options. Either the date the respondent was served or the date the respondent appeared.

You can use either date, the date of service or the date the respondent appeared. The date the respondent was served is pretty clear. Whether they were served personally, or by having them sign a notice and acknowledgment of receipt, you will use either the date they were personally served or the date they signed the FL-117.

But what are they talking about as far as, “The date the respondent appeared”?  The date the respondent appeared is the date the respondent filed their response. That is their “appearance”.

It really does not matter which date you use. We generally will use the date of service because that is usually a sooner date as the Respondent is usually served before they file the response. However, when there is a Response filed to the divorce case we do tend to use the date of the response or appearance to show the court that this is an uncontested divorce.