Case conference....

[jlalex]

Good morning everyone,

It would seem that we are on to the next step. Ex still won't contact her lawyer, since November, even after repeated phone calls. So our lawyer has advised we move ahead to case conference. We live in the Toronto area and the paperwork is filed in the Ottawa as that is where ex and child live. Our lawyer is going to see if we could possibly do the case conference by telephone conference, she said it is done routinely in the Toronto area but isn't sure if it is done this way in Ottawa. It would save us the expense of having to hire a lawyer in the Ottawa area as well not to mention the travel time.

Does anyone offhand know of this being done? Also, does anyone know off hand how long does it take to schedule the case conference..are we talking months?

Thanks as always for the help!
Jlalex

[Denisem]

Hi

In my case the first court date took about 3 months, then we had to go back 2 months later. I would not have wanted mine to be done on the phone because the judge was not just listening to us, she was watching us very well and I could tell by her face if she was falling for his lies or not. Her expression told me what she was thinking as she was listening to the lawyers, then I would make eye contact with her. I think the phone would have been hard for me. What ever you think would be best for you.

[jlalex]

thanks for the reply.

I'm not too worried about doing this over the phone, she isn't a very convincing liar. Her position on why she should have sole custody is because we gave her son pork for dinner ( no religious considerations at all, she just thinks it causes cancer) and he drinks tap water when he is here (not bottled water).

There is no agreement of any kind up until now, and though there have been plenty of arguements he ( my common law husband) and the ex usually manage to work things out. But when she was served with divorce papers she went nutso demanding sole custody and spousal support - this after 8+ years of seperation.

We aren't too worried that she will succeed, apart from her initial answer asking for spousal and sole custody she hasn't bothered talking to her lawyer. I think its pretty apparent that she just did it to make trouble.

Since she won't budge from either issue or call her lawyer back for that matter, then its off to the case conference and while we've already spent over 5k to get this far I'm not looking forward to shelling out more money if it can be avoided.

Oops sorry about the rant, but I get a little fired up sometimes..lol

Jlalex

[logicalvelocity]

jlalex,

I believe you will be succesful in your claims. Status Quo will prevail. The onus is on them to show why a sole custody regime will be superior to the child than the status quo that has been in effect for the last 8 years. The court will also see when one party wants to make the staus quo legal, then the other party wants sole.

lv

[jlalex]

Thanks for the reply LV!

I just hope this comes to an end pretty soon, its been awfully frustrating waiting on her to do something so if we can move this ahead it would be great. We did hear back from our lawyer and the tele-conference is a go, now she has to contact ex's lawyer to pick a date...I just hope they actually respond instead of ignoring us.....

Have a great day everyone!
Jlalex