  The Rafita asteroid family is an S-type group located in the middle main
belt, on the right side of the 3J:-1A mean-motion resonance. The proximity of
this resonance to the family left side in semi-major axis caused many former
family members to be lost. As a consequence, the family shape in the $(a,1/D)$
domain is quite asymmetrical, with a preponderance of objects on the right side
of the distribution. The Rafita family is also characterized by a leptokurtic
distribution in inclination, which allows the use of methods of family age
estimation recently introduced for other leptokurtic families such as Astrid,
Hansa, Gallia, and Barcelona. In this work we propose a new method based on the
behavior of an asymmetry coefficient function of the distribution in the
$(a,1/D)$ plane to date incomplete asteroid families such as Rafita. By
monitoring the time behavior of this coefficient for asteroids simulating the
initial conditions at the time of the family formation, we were able to
estimate that the Rafita family should have an age of $490\pm200$ Myr, in good
agreement with results from independent methods such as Monte Carlo simulations
of Yarkovsky and Yorp dynamical induced evolution and the time behaviour of the
kurtosis of the $\sin{(i)}$ distribution. Asteroids from the Rafita family can
reach orbits similar to 8\% of the currently known near Earth objects.
$\simeq$1\% of the simulated objects are present in NEO-space during the final
10 Myr of the simulation, and thus would be comparable to objects in the
present-day NEO population.
