Certain filing types should default to "confidential" but we don't do that now

[nonprofittechy]

E.g., fee waiver, adoption petition - i don't think most states require you to get a court order to make these confidential, so confidential should be the default.

we should also clearly state in those cases that they are confidential by default.

[nonprofittechy]

Research & EFSP API investigation: defaulting document confidentiality (issue #257)

We investigated whether the EFSP API provides enough metadata to automatically decide when to default a document to confidential, exploring live staging codes across Illinois, Massachusetts, and Vermont for both adoption and fee-waiver/indigency filings.

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1. Legal & statutory context (September 2026)

State	Adoption petition / case	Fee-waiver filing	What LITEFile should default
Illinois	Automatically nonpublic / impounded. 750 ILCS 50/18(c) mandates that circuit clerk adoption records are impounded and examined only by court order.	Application itself is not automatically sealed. Ill. S. Ct. R. 298(d) specifies that documents the court orders submitted in support of a fee-waiver application are treated as sealed; the application itself is not sealed.	Adoption: confidential / impounded. Fee waiver application: non-confidential. Court-ordered supporting financial docs: confidential / sealed.
Massachusetts	Automatically nonpublic. G.L. c. 210, § 5C impounds adoption proceedings by statute.	Affidavit of Indigency is automatically confidential. Mass. Superior Court Rule 18 states the Affidavit of Indigency is "impounded by law" and clerks impound it in the ordinary course. (Note: Appeals Court instructions tell filers to submit the fee-waiver motion as Public, but the Indigency Affidavit as Impounded).	Adoption: confidential / impounded. Affidavit of Indigency / Supplemental: confidential / impounded.
Vermont	Automatically confidential. 15A V.S.A. § 6-102 makes adoption records confidential.	More limited. VT public-access rules exclude financial records submitted with a fee-waiver application "other than [the] supporting affidavit." Form 600-00228 itself is not categorically confidential statewide.	Adoption: confidential. Fee-waiver application: non-confidential. Separate supporting financial records: confidential / nonpublic.

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2. Does the EFSP give enough information to decide?

No. The live EFSP /document_types endpoint does not provide sufficient or reliable data to determine these defaults automatically:

1. Illinois (eFileIL):

   • In Cook County Division (cook:cd1), querying /document_types for any filing type under Adoption (category 7405, e.g., Petition for Adult Adoption, Petition to Waive Filing Fees - Adoption Special Needs, Proof of Service) returns:

     [
       {"code": "5766", "name": "Non-Confidential", "isdefault": false, "efspcode": "PublicEFSP"},
       {"code": "5767", "name": "Confidential", "isdefault": false, "efspcode": "ConfidentialEFSP"},
       {"code": "311764", "name": "Confidential Proposed Order Only", "isdefault": false}
     ]

   • isdefault is false across all options.
   • Both "Non-Confidential" and "Confidential" are offered with equal weight for every filing type in Adoption, despite 750 ILCS 50/18(c). The EFSP has no category-level or filing-level impoundment indicator.

2. Massachusetts (Tyler MA):

   • In Suffolk Probate and Family Court (339), querying /document_types for adoption and indigency filing types (Petition for Adoption with Changing Name, Affidavit of Indigency Filed, etc.) returns [] (an empty array).
   • In BMC courts (408), filing types only expose a single option: [{"code": "6020", "name": "Public", "isdefault": false}].
   • The EFSP provides no metadata signaling that an Affidavit of Indigency Filed is impounded by law.

3. Vermont:

   • In Chittenden Unit Probate (169), 12853: Initial Filing - Confidential restricts document types to Confidential (isdefault: true) and Sealed Document (isdefault: false), excluding Public.
   • However, for fee waivers (7633) and disclosures (12847, 12848), the EFSP sets isdefault: true on Public (12725).

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3. How this maps to LITEFile's architecture

Currently, LITEFile relies on:

1. A flat jurisdiction-wide default in state YAML (e.g. document_confidentiality.default: "non_confidential" in illinois.yaml).
2. Client logic in organize-documents.js that checks this flat YAML string and ignores item.isdefault from the API.

To address #257, LITEFile needs a rules-based confidentiality hierarchy:

• Rule 1: State YAML case/category rules (e.g., case_category: [Adoption] → default confidential with helper copy: "Adoption records are confidential by law, so we selected confidential for you.").
• Rule 2: State YAML filing-type / alias rules (e.g., MA Affidavit of Indigency Filed → default confidential; IL/VT Application for Waiver of Court Fees → default non_confidential).
• Rule 3: EFSP API fallback: If no YAML rule matches, check if EFSP returns isdefault: true (as in VT confidential filings).
• Rule 4: Jurisdiction default fallback: Default to non_confidential.

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4. Questions for Illinois court contacts

1. In eFileIL, for Adoption filings, does the circuit clerk's office expect e-filers to select "Confidential" (5767) on initiating petitions, or does the court case-management system automatically impound the case upon docketing regardless of whether the document type was marked "Non-Confidential" or "Confidential"?
2. For the Illinois Application for Waiver of Court Fees, do clerks prefer the application itself to be submitted as "Non-Confidential" (5766), with only court-ordered financial attachments (e.g. tax returns, bank statements under Rule 298) marked "Confidential" (5767), or is it standard practice in some circuits to mark the initial fee-waiver application confidential as well?

[mnewsted]

@nonprofittechy In IL, adoption and juvenile are always confidential. We don't think fee waivers are. We can confirm.