Short answer. Ten days from service of summons. Rule 70, Section 6 requires the defendant in an ejectment case to file an answer within ten days and serve a copy on the plaintiff. Defences not pleaded are waived, except lack of jurisdiction over the subject matter, and unraised counterclaims are barred.
What the law says
Within ten days from service of summons, the defendant shall file his answer to the complaint and serve a copy thereof on the plaintiff.
Rule 70, Section 6 — Answer. Read the full provision →
The ten-day clock
The section opens with the deadline: Within ten days from service of summons, the defendant shall file his answer to the complaint and serve a copy thereof on the plaintiff. Two acts are required, not one — filing with the court and serving the plaintiff — and both fall inside the same ten days. The clock starts on the day summons is served on you, not the day the case was filed and not the day you first learned of the dispute informally. Ejectment is designed to move quickly, and this compressed period is the first place that design shows.
Silence is expensive
The consequences of an incomplete answer are written into the same section: Affirmative and negative defenses not pleaded therein shall be deemed waived, except lack of jurisdiction over the subject matter. Your answer is therefore the one opportunity to put your defences on record — whatever you intend to argue about the plaintiff's right, your possession or the demand made on you must appear in it. Only one objection survives silence: that the court has no jurisdiction over the subject matter. Everything else, if unpleaded, is gone for the rest of the case.
Counterclaims are on the same clock
The section then reaches your own claims: Cross-claims and compulsory counterclaims not asserted in the answer shall be considered barred. If you have a claim against the plaintiff arising from the same dispute — reimbursement, damages connected to the property — it must ride in the answer or it is lost. And the timeline continues past your answer: The answer to counterclaims or cross-claims shall be served and filed within ten days from service of the answer in which they are pleaded, so a plaintiff met with a counterclaim inherits a ten-day deadline of their own.
What to do the day you are served
Note the date of service — every computation begins there. Bring the summons, the complaint and its annexes to a lawyer immediately: ten days is little time to investigate the plaintiff's claimed right, assemble proof of your own possession, and draft an answer that pleads every defence and counterclaim you have. While waiting for that meeting, gather the documents that bear on possession — contracts, receipts, correspondence, any written demand you received — because whatever is not pleaded within the period will, in the section's own words, be deemed waived or considered barred.