If a special proceeding like a guardianship or estate case doesn't have its own specific procedural rule for a situation, can the court just apply the ordinary rules of civil procedure instead?

A gap-filler, not a replacement

Special proceedings like estate settlement, guardianship, or adoption have their own dedicated rules covering most of what happens in those cases. Those dedicated rules do not cover every conceivable procedural question, though, so Rule 72 supplies a default: where a special proceeding's own rules are silent, the rules written for ordinary civil actions fill the gap. The special rules still control whenever they actually address the point.

What 'as far as practicable' means

The borrowing is not automatic or total. Ordinary-action rules apply only 'as far as practicable,' meaning only to the extent they can sensibly fit the special, non-adversarial nature of the proceeding. A rule written for a two-party lawsuit will not always transplant cleanly into a proceeding meant to establish a status or settle an estate among many interested parties. A court applying an ordinary-action rule by analogy still has to check whether doing so actually makes sense given the different structure and purpose of the special proceeding before it.

Practical consequence for litigants

For someone involved in a special proceeding, this means unfamiliar procedural situations rarely leave a true vacuum. If the estate or guardianship rules do not address a particular motion, deadline, or evidentiary question, the ordinary rules of civil procedure are the fallback the court reaches for, rather than the court inventing its own approach case by case. Someone unsure how to handle a procedural wrinkle the special proceeding rules do not directly answer can generally look to how the ordinary rules would treat the same situation, subject to the practicability limit.

What this does not do

Rule 72 does not let a party invoke ordinary civil procedure to override a special proceeding rule that actually covers the point, and it does not convert a special proceeding into an ordinary adversarial lawsuit. The default only fills genuine silence in the special rules; where the special proceeding rules already speak to an issue, that specific rule controls over whatever the ordinary rules of civil procedure would otherwise say. Nor does it authorize importing an ordinary-action procedure that would conflict with the summary or non-adversarial character the special proceeding rules deliberately built in, since practicability itself cuts against transplanting a procedure that would undercut that structure.

Related provisions

• Rule 72, Section 2 — Applicability of rules of civil actions
• Rule 72, Section 1 — Subject matter of special proceedings