Definition
A voluntary answer is a pleading filed in equity by a defendant in response to a bill in equity without having been compelled to do so by the plaintiff. In the traditional equity practice from which the term derives, a defendant could wait for the plaintiff to formally call upon them to answer — a procedural step that, if ignored, could lead to default or other consequences. When a defendant instead answered the bill on their own initiative, before being summoned or pressed to do so, that answer was designated "voluntary."
The term signals the absence of compulsion: no rule to plead, no order of the court, and no procedural default driving the response. The defendant stepped forward without being required to.
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Common Confusion
VOLUNTARY ANSWER should not be confused with an answer filed under compulsion following a plaintiff's demand or court order, which was simply an "answer" in equity practice. The distinction mattered procedurally in historical equity courts because the timing and voluntariness of an answer could affect certain rights and obligations of the parties — including whether a plaintiff could take the bill pro confesso (as confessed) against a non-responding defendant. In modern merged civil procedure, where the Federal Rules and most state equivalents govern both law and equity, the formal category of "voluntary answer" as a distinct procedural designation has largely dissolved. Researchers encountering the term in older equity records should not assume it carries the same weight as a responsive pleading filed under current civil rules.
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Why It Matters in Research
This term is essentially a creature of historical equity procedure and will appear almost exclusively in pre-merger equity cases, chancery court records, and treatises written before the fusion of law and equity — primarily pre-1938 federal practice and pre-merger state equity practice in jurisdictions that maintained separate chancery courts into the twentieth century.
Researchers working in equity records should watch for two things. First, whether an answer was voluntary could have downstream procedural consequences in equity: it might affect whether the plaintiff could obtain a pro confesso decree, and it could bear on the defendant's ability to raise certain defenses or amend the answer later. Second, the Rapalje & Lawrence entry cross-references voluntary assignment in an oddly compressed way — the citation to 3 Sumner (U.S.) 345 and 10 Paige (N.Y.) 445 belongs to the distinct entry for VOLUNTARY ASSIGNMENT, not to voluntary answer itself. Researchers should not import those authorities into analysis of voluntary answer.
In modern civil practice, the concept has no operative counterpart as a formal category. Defendants answer when required by rule; there is no procedural significance attached to answering early or without being formally called upon. If you encounter the term in a modern brief or pleading, treat it as informal usage meaning simply "an answer filed without compulsion," not as a term of art.
For researchers tracing equity procedure across jurisdictions, the relevant corpus connections are to chancery practice materials, state-specific equity rules predating code pleading adoption, and federal equity rules prior to the 1938 Federal Rules of Civil Procedure.
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Historical Dictionary Support
Rapalje & Lawrence offer a serviceable but minimal definition: a voluntary answer is one "filed by a defendant to a bill in equity, without being called upon to answer by the plaintiff." This is accurate as far as it goes. The entry is notably brief and immediately pivots — somewhat confusingly — to voluntary assignment, suggesting the compilers treated the term as self-explanatory to practitioners of their era.
No extended doctrinal treatment appears in this source. The definition captures the essential feature (absence of plaintiff compulsion) but says nothing about the procedural consequences or the context in which the distinction mattered. Researchers wanting the full procedural picture of voluntary answers in equity practice will need to supplement Rapalje & Lawrence with equity practice treatises such as Story's Commentaries on Equity Pleadings or Daniell's Chancery Practice, where the timing and effect of answers — voluntary or otherwise — are treated in depth.
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Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
No Law Mind Encyclopedia entry maps directly to voluntary answer as a procedural concept. For related voluntary-act distinctions in adjacent doctrinal areas, see:
The Law Mind Family Law Encyclopedia — Adoption: Voluntary Relinquishment and Surrender (family_122), for the concept of voluntariness in consent-based legal acts.
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