I believe the web help is incorrect where it states:REQUIRED �??The field is a required field. This means new records must contain a value for the field. Required fields are permanent and can not be deleted. 'This means new records must contain a value for the field' should be removed. Setting a field to 'Required' will make it permanent, and disable the option to delete it. As a workaround you could create a script to check all 'required' fields for empty values. Here is an example:import arcpy
from arcpy import env
env.workspace = r"C:\temp\python\test.gdb"
fc = "Req_Test"
lstFields = arcpy.ListFields(fc, "*")
for field in lstFields:
if field.required == True:
field_name = field.name
rows = arcpy.SearchCursor(fc, "", "", field_name)
for row in rows:
val = row.getValue(field_name)
if val == " ":
print field_name + " contains a blank row for OBJECTID " + str(row.OBJECTID)
del row, rows