Usually, yes. Georgia treats most defects in a pleading as something you fix rather than something that ends the case.
The Standard
OCGA 9-11-15(a) says leave to amend “shall be freely given when justice so requires,” and Georgia courts read the whole statute the same way. As the Court of Appeals put it in Edenfield & Cox, P.C. v. Mack, 282 Ga. App. 816 (2006), “OCGA 9-11-15(a) is to be liberally construed in favor of the allowance of amendments, particularly when the party opposing the amendment is not prejudiced thereby.”
OCGA 19-5-8 applies these same civil pleading rules to divorce, alimony, and custody cases. Calhoun v. Somogyi, 190 Ga. App. 502 (1989), puts it plainly: “this state has a liberal policy for allowing amendment.”
Missing Signatures and Missing Verifications
The defect in Edenfield & Cox looked serious. A man who had hired the plaintiff firm for his own divorce was later sued by it over the fees. He was travelling when his answer came due, so he had another attorney sign his name to it. The firm moved three times to strike the answer and take a default judgment.
It failed. “[T]he failure of a pleading to be signed by an attorney or a party or to be verified where required constitutes a defect which does not render the pleading null and void but which may be cured by amendment.” He had filed corrected answers he signed himself, before any pretrial order, and “the ultimate sanction of entry of default judgment was unwarranted.”
Prejudice Is the Real Question
Note the qualifier in the rule. What the court examined was whether the timing of the amendments had actually harmed the other side, and the firm had not shown that it had. Waiting is what creates prejudice, so amend as soon as you spot the problem.
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This post is a quick overview of the law and is not intended as legal advice. Please feel free to contact our office for a consultation if you have questions about this or any other legal aspects regarding your case!