Which rulebook do you trust?

Here's an uncomfortable question for South Carolina family law practitioners: what does Rule 2(a) of the South Carolina Rules of Family Court actually say?

That shouldn't be a hard question. But right now, two authoritative publications give two different answers — and the difference concerns temporary hearings, the most commonly filed motion practice in family court.

The South Carolina Bar's South Carolina Rules Annotated — in its 2019, 2020, and 2024 editions, identically — renders Rule 2(a)'s list of inapplicable civil-procedure rules as including this clause:

“6(d) and 7(b) for proceedings involving temporary relief under Rule 21, SCRFC”

The version of Rule 2 published on the South Carolina Judicial Branch's own website contains no such clause.

One of these is wrong. And it matters which — or at least, it used to matter a great deal, and understanding why tells you something important about the October 2025 temporary-hearing overhaul.

Why that clause existed

Under the former Rule 21 — the version that governed until October 1, 2025 — the carve-out did real work.

Rule 6(d), SCRCP requires a written motion and notice of hearing to be served not later than ten days before the hearing, with supporting affidavits served alongside the motion. But old Rule 21(a) required service only five days out, and old Rule 21(c) said — in so many words — that affidavits filed at a temporary hearing “need not be served on the opposing party prior to the temporary hearing,” notwithstanding Rule 6(d). Anyone who practiced family law under that regime remembers the experience it produced: you learned what was in the other side's affidavits when they handed them to you at the hearing.

Those two provisions were in head-on conflict with the general civil rule. So Rule 2(a)'s carve-out — excluding 6(d) and 7(b) from temporary-relief proceedings — made the scheme coherent. Belt and suspenders: the exclusion in Rule 2(a), and a “notwithstanding” clause inside Rule 21 itself.

Then October 2025 happened

The Supreme Court's amendments to Rule 21 (adopted by orders of January 29 and April 29, 2025, effective for any temporary-hearing request submitted on or after October 1, 2025) reversed both premises.

In other words: the carve-out became functionally inert. Amended Rule 21 out-requires the general rules it was once excused from.

But here's the wrinkle — the 2025 orders amended Rule 21 only. We pulled both orders and compared the full text: no reference to Rule 2, no reference to 6(d) or 7(b) anywhere. The Court did not delete the carve-out, because the Court wasn't editing the rule that contains it. So if the clause was official text in September 2025, it is official text today — vestigial, but alive.

Which brings us back to the two rulebooks. No order removes the clause. It appears verbatim across three editions of the Bar's annotated rules spanning five years. The former Rule 21's own “notwithstanding” language corroborates that the exclusion was real law. On the documentary record, the better-supported reading is that the clause remains part of official Rule 2(a) — and the website omits it. But we could not locate the order that originally added the clause, so we've put the question to the Clerk of the Supreme Court directly rather than declare the answer ourselves.

Why any of this matters to your practice

Three takeaways, in ascending order of importance.

We'll update this post when the Clerk's office responds.