Monterey County trial document templates
Not legal advice. Rules checked against the code on August 20, 2026. Verify every date yourself. Read the full disclaimer
Core CCP rules were checked against Westlaw (via CoCounsel legal research) on August 20, 2026. County local rules are paraphrased summaries. Individual department and judge standing orders are included only where the court publishes them and we have read the document, so assume your own department has requirements beyond what you see here. Verify every date against the operative code sections, your court’s rules and your department’s own order before relying on it. Using this site creates no attorney-client relationship.
6 documents, 19 required sections, taken from Superior Court of California, County of Monterey’s own published rules and read 2026-09-14. Each one downloads as California pleading paper with this court’s required sections already placed, so the document cannot silently omit one.
A blank template is easy to find anywhere. What is hard to find is which sections this court requires inside the document, because that lives in a local rule nobody indexes. Every heading below is cited to the subdivision it came from, and the rule’s own sentence prints beside it in the reference sheet so you can check your work.
Download these as templates
The reference sheet below carries everything this court requires, each rule quoted from its own text and cited to the subdivision. The pleading paper templates are temporarily down while the line numbering is rebuilt, because the rail did not line up with the body text and a pleading whose lines cannot be cited is worse than no template at all.
Your details optional, blanks print as ruled lines
These stay in this browser. They are not sent anywhere, and the file is built on this machine, so a case name never reaches our server.
- Settlement Conference Statement
- Trial Management Report and Brief
- Declaration of Objections to Opposing Parties' Exhibits
- Proposed Jury Instructions
- Proposed Verdict Forms
- Exhibit Packet (remote trials and evidentiary hearings)
What each document has to carry
Settlement Conference Statement
Prepared by each party. Filed, no later than five court days before the mandatory settlement conference, which the court sets approximately thirty days before trial. Applies to all civil cases set for a mandatory settlement conference. Monterey County Super. Ct., Local Rules, rule 6.13(D)
- Contents required by rule 6.13(D), on top of California Rules of Court, rule 3.1380(c)
- A complete description of the nature of the case and the facts supporting that party's contentions, covering both liability and damages, and indicating the matters agreed upon and the matters in dispute
- The legal contentions of that party with supporting authorities
- An itemization of alleged economic damages
- The remaining two items enumerated at rule 6.13(D)(4) and (D)(5)
- Additional information in a Song-Beverly Consumer Warranty Act case
- Purchase or lease price
- Dealer-supplied items
- Balance owed
- Ownership or trade-in status
- Complaint and repair dates
- Mileage
- Repurchase offers and information requests
- An itemization of damages, per the ten items enumerated at rule 6.13(E)(1) through (E)(10)
Trial Management Report and Brief
Prepared by each party, or the parties jointly. Filed, Category One: the Friday before trial. Category Two: four court days before trial, no later than 3:00 p.m. Category Three: at least three days before the trial management conference, otherwise four court days before trial.. Applies to all civil trials except domestic relations, adoption, probate and unlawful detainer. Monterey County Super. Ct., Local Rules, rule 6.11(B)
- Form of the Report (subd. (A))
- California legal format
- The full case caption
- Typed or computer printed on pleading paper
- The information requested by each subdivision of Appendix A, or an explanation of why an item is absent
- Attachments where added information or each party's separate positions are needed
- Summary of the allegations and supporting facts (subd. (C))
- A summary of the allegations as contended by each party
- The supporting facts as contended by each party
- Causes of action and defenses (subd. (D))
- The specific causes of action as contained in the pleadings
- The specific defenses as contained in the pleadings
- Trial briefs, pretrial motions, motions in limine and requests for judicial notice (subd. (E))
- A list of all requests for judicial notice
- A list of all pretrial motions
- A list of all motions in limine
- Appropriate points and authorities
- All trial briefs, as necessary, filed with the Trial Management Report and Brief
- Status of discovery (subd. (F))
- A statement whether discovery is completed
- If discovery is not completed, why it has not been completed
- The specific areas of discovery yet to be completed
- Stipulations (subd. (G))
- The stipulations already agreed upon
- Any matter the party is willing to stipulate to
- Proposed exhibits (subd. (H))
- A list of all proposed exhibits
- All proposed exhibits pre-marked and exchanged or reviewed between the parties
- Plaintiff or petitioner exhibits marked with numbers and defendant or respondent exhibits marked with letters, unless the trial judge designates otherwise
- Identification of every exhibit to be viewed by the jury before deliberations, including demonstrative evidence, charts and posters
- Those exhibits made available for review
- If the court permits their use, counsel's arrangements for enough copies for each juror, or for the enlargement or projector
- All equipment necessary to listen to or view evidence, obtained, set up and approved by the court
- For an electronic sound or sound-and-video recording, compliance with California Rules of Court, rule 2.1040 and a copy of the recording and any required transcript to the opposing party before the hearing
- Depositions intended to be used at trial (subd. (I))
- A list of all depositions intended to be used during trial
- Any objections to those depositions
- Video depositions (subd. (J))
- The intended use of any video deposition
- The objections to each video deposition
- Witness list (subd. (K))
- A list of witnesses
- The general nature of each witness's testimony, for example percipient witness, character witness, expert witness on damages
- Identification of any witness needing special assistance, an interpreter or a disability accommodation
- Any special scheduling problems
- Voir dire (subd. (L))
- The subject areas the parties wish the court to inquire into
- The subject areas the parties request to ask questions about themselves
- Any request for a juror questionnaire, with the proposed questionnaire attached
- Any request for in camera questioning of a juror
- Other requests (subd. (O))
- All additional requests the party wants the trial court to address
Declaration of Objections to Opposing Parties' Exhibits
Prepared by each party. Filed, Appendix A sets no independent date. It travels with the Trial Management Report and Brief, so it follows the category deadline in rule 6.11(B).. Applies to all civil trials governed by rule 6.11 and Appendix A. Monterey County Super. Ct., Local Rules, ch. 6, appen. A, subd. (H)
- Objections to the exhibits of the opposing parties
- Any objections to the exhibits of the opposing parties
- A brief statement of reasons for each objection
Proposed Jury Instructions
Prepared by each party. Lodged, lodged with the court together with the Trial Management Report and Brief, so on the category deadline in rule 6.11(B). Applies to all civil jury trials governed by rule 6.11 and Appendix A. Monterey County Super. Ct., Local Rules, ch. 6, appen. A, subd. (M)
- Form and lodging of the proposed instructions
- All proposed jury instructions, lodged with the court together with the Report
- Fully edited, with no blank lines and no unused bracketed portions
- Submitted in duplicate
- One copy prepared on plain paper, separate from argument or authorities
- No indication on that copy of which party submitted it
Proposed Verdict Forms
Prepared by each party. Filed, filed with the Trial Management Report and Brief, so on the category deadline in rule 6.11(B). Applies to all civil jury trials governed by rule 6.11 and Appendix A. Monterey County Super. Ct., Local Rules, ch. 6, appen. A, subd. (N)
- Form of the proposed verdict forms
- Proposed verdict forms, filed with the Report
- Prepared on plain pleading paper
- No indication of by whom the verdict forms are presented
Exhibit Packet (remote trials and evidentiary hearings)
Prepared by each party. Lodged, shared with the other party no later than five business days before trial, and delivered to the court at least two business days before the trial or hearing when the appearance is remote. Applies to trials and evidentiary hearings conducted partially or completely remotely. Superior Court of Monterey County, Exhibit Guidelines for Remote Trials and Evidentiary Hearings (Jan. 1, 2023), Preparing Your Exhibits, incorporated by Monterey County Super. Ct., Local Rules, rule 1.8(D)(1)
- Exhibit List as the first page, then the exhibits in order
- The exhibit number or letter, listed in order
- A brief description of each exhibit
- Columns to indicate at trial Marked for Identification and Admitted into Evidence
- An exhibit sticker on each exhibit carrying the exhibit number or letter and the case number, placed in the lower right corner of the first page
- Binder organization and labeling for lodging
- A three-ring binder with tabbed dividers where there are several exhibits or the exhibits are voluminous
- The packet sealed in an envelope or secured in a binder
- A label carrying case name, case number, hearing date, court department and party name
Start with the joint documents
One of these is prepared jointly: Trial Management Report and Brief. A joint document needs a meet and confer before it can be filed, so it sets the real deadline even though the filing date is the same as everything else.
When each one is due
Most of these do not run off the trial date. They run off the mandatory settlement conference (all civil cases), plus a discretionary trial management conference in category three cases only, which the court sets, and counting back from trial instead is the commonest way one gets missed. The full rule list for Monterey County carries every rule with its quoted text, and the trial countdown calculator computes the statewide CCP chain.
How these were built
Every rule was researched from the court’s own published text, then checked a second time by a reader told to assume a rule had been invented. Grouping those rules into the documents a court actually wants was a further pass, and an adversarial check corrected it: the commonest error was a document whose contents the first pass left empty while the rule enumerated them. Templates are generated in your browser, so nothing you type is sent anywhere. See methodology.
Related: All courts with templates · Monterey trial binder rules · Trial countdown calculator