I have made a modification to the plugin to allow for the use of watermark plugins such as focusmagic.. It will check the LABEL FOR value and compare it to the current field value and pass/fail accordingly

Hopefully you can look at implementing it somehow (maybe with better error handling)

http:docs.jquery.com/Plugins/Validation/Methods/required

required: function(value, element, param) {

See if we have a label set by a watermark plugin

var thelabel = $('label[for=' + element.id + ']');

check if dependency is met

if ( !this.depend(param, element) )

return "dependency-mismatch";

switch( element.nodeName.toLowerCase() ) {

case 'select':

could be an array for select-multiple or a string, both are fine this way

var val = $(element).val();

return val && val.length > 0;

case 'input':

if ( this.checkable(element) )

return this.getLength(value, element) > 0;

default:

if(thelabel)

{

if(thelabel.text() == $.trim(value))

{

Label (watermark value) is the same as the field value

return false;

}

}

return $.trim(value).length > 0;

}

},