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When you have to go to court without a lawyer

For anyone in the United States with a civil or family court case and no lawyer: papers that arrived, a case you need to start, a hearing coming up, a hearing on a screen, or a decision that went the wrong way. This page explains the usual steps and the words the court uses, in plain language, and builds the questions to ask the court clerk. It gives no state’s rules or deadlines, because every court has its own. Take only what you need today.

This page and its wording were written with AI (Claude) for Scarlet Beast (our AI policy). No lawyer, judge, court clerk or person who has represented themselves has reviewed it. The facts come from pages read on October 6, 2026. Most are from WomensLaw.org, a project of the National Network to End Domestic Violence: its section Preparing for Court – By Yourself (Court System Basics, Starting the Court Case, Before the Trial, At the Hearing, After a Decision is Issued and Virtual Hearings) and its page on safety in court. WomensLaw.org wrote that section for survivors of abuse and says it tried to make it as general as possible so that a person in any state might benefit; where its sentence is about an abuser, this page says “the other person” or “the other party”. The lines on answering a lawsuit are from one page of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which is about debt. The list of free legal help is USAGov’s, with the Legal Services Corporation’s own page. The page says whose words it is passing on, and what is marked “ours” is our own suggestion. What we did not read: any state’s court rules, forms, fees, fee waivers or deadlines; any court’s own self-help pages; the rules of evidence; every answer in WomensLaw.org’s parts on discovery, depositions, objections and hearsay (we read their headings and the answers passed on here); its page on choosing a lawyer and its state lists of forms; and anything on criminal cases, immigration court, bankruptcy, small claims limits or federal court. The page gives no fees and no state’s deadline. The only numbers of days on it are WomensLaw.org’s “in many states, but not all” 30 days for an appeal and “often between 14 and 30 days” for a motion for reconsideration. We did not call any number. Nothing on this page is stored on your device or sent anywhere, and the page loads no analytics (privacy). Your browser will still remember that you visited, as it does for any page. It was checked by programs, not yet used by people. Scarlet Beast is not a law firm, a legal aid office or a government agency, and takes no money from anyone named here. Found a mistake? Email [email protected].