Short answer. You get ten calendar days from notice of the filing to signify your grounds of objection. Section 10 also bars objections based on grounds available during the commissioner proceedings — other than objections to the findings and conclusions themselves — unless you actually raised them before the commissioner at the time.

What the law says

Upon the filing of the report, the parties shall be notified by the clerk, and they shall be allowed ten calendar days within which to signify grounds of objections to the findings of the report, if they so desire. Objections to the report based upon grounds which were available to the parties during the proceedings before the commissioner, other than objections to the findings and conclusions therein set forth, shall not be considered by the court unless they were made before the commissioner.

Rule 32, Section 10 — Notice to parties of the filing of report. Read the full provision →

The ten-day window

Once the commissioner's report is filed with the court, the clerk notifies the parties that the filing has taken place. From that notice, each party has ten calendar days within which to signify their grounds of objection to the findings of the report — but only if they actually wish to object. Section 10 does not obligate a party to file anything when they have no quarrel with what the commissioner found; the ten-day period functions as the outer limit for anyone who does want to contest the report to put those grounds on record before the court, so the case can move forward without the report's findings lingering unchallenged indefinitely.

The bar on procedural objections not raised earlier

Section 10 separates two kinds of objections. Objections grounded on issues that were available to the parties during the proceedings before the commissioner — problems a party could have raised at the time but did not — will not be considered by the court later, unless they were first made before the commissioner. That bar specifically excludes objections to the findings and conclusions the commissioner ultimately reached; those substantive objections stay open within the ten-day window no matter what happened during the proceedings. The bar targets only procedural complaints that could have been, but were not, raised while the commissioner was actually conducting the proceedings themselves.

Why the distinction between substance and procedure matters

A party can always challenge the correctness of the commissioner's findings and conclusions within the ten-day window after the report is filed, since that avenue remains open regardless of what took place during the proceedings themselves. Procedural complaints are handled differently: if a party noticed something wrong with how the commissioner was conducting the proceedings — an irregularity in procedure, as opposed to the ultimate findings — the rule expects that complaint to be raised right then, before the commissioner, while it could still be corrected. Waiting until the report is filed to raise a procedural objection that could have been made earlier means the objection is lost, because Section 10 treats silence at the time as forfeiting that specific complaint.

Related provisions

Note. Statute text quoted on this page is reproduced from the official enactment and is linked to the full provision. The explanation around it is general legal information from Vivas & Nobles Law Office, not legal advice. Whether it applies to your situation depends on facts only a lawyer reviewing them can assess.