My time was cut short

[rockscan]

Its also important to remember the bottom line that judges use facts and evidence. They dont care what happened three years ago on the anniversary of the time a bird flew by your house. They want the facts. You have x instances where you were denied access and the dates are in the attached chart. Your income was x dollars equaling x child support but you paid more or less and the total owing is y.

As OL said, there is a set way of operating in court and lawyer go to school for several years and then "apprentice" under another lawyer to learn these rules. Good lawyers have experience and follow the rules. Many self reps are buoyed by emotion and upset over the situation. You have to set emotion aside and go on fact. If you have good facts and good evidence it should be in your materials (short and sweet) and you speak to that. Unless your case is complex (see WorkingDad), you should be able to meet the timelines the court sets out.

[Aghast]

The Judge reserved his decision so I was wondering if there was anything I should do before the decision is made.


I would like to take this opportunity to give some advice that I have learned from this. Read these 2 articles:

1. Forget the Wind-Up and Make the Pitch: Some Suggestions for Writing More Persuasive Factums

2. Strategic Legal Writing: Preparing Persuasive Documents

Print these off and read them more than once. Even if you are not writing a Factum, the ideas can be translated into oral argument.

OrleansLawyer mentioned the Factum, and these articles mention that too many lawyers write bare Factums and rely on oral argument, which is wrong. I took the article's advice. My Factum was basically my argument. After re-reading my Factum, my basic argument is clear.

There are a few things that I wanted to add in my oral argument that came to me after my Factum was filed and that is what I missed with the time cut short, but the main problem was that I had my argument organized and the short time caused me to have to jump around and resulted in some of my argument getting confusing, and me getting flustered.

My advice is to read the above articles and follow their advice throughout. Not just if you write a Factum but in your Affidavits, oral arguments, Briefs...

Make your story clear in all of your submissions.

Affidavits are evidence in Motions so if something in the other party's affidavit is wrong, you need to point it out or at least state that you disagree, don't let anything slip by even if it sounds minor to you, because you may not be able to correct it during the Motion and the question will be "Why didn't you say something in your responding Affidavit"

If the other party's cross responding Affidavit (is that a term?) brings up new issues; respond to them. Even if it is past the deadline. File it late or have it commissioned and bring it to court with you (bring 3 copies, or more if there are more parties that need to be served) and explain to the Judge that you are responding to new issues brought up after your deadline. Don't add anything new, just respond to the new issues.

I had to do this and it saved my ass. The Judge allowed it and had already read it. The other side has a lawyer so I don't know why the lawyer allowed the new arguments to be submitted in that final Affidavit, but it worked against them.

The Judge I had was not a Family Court Judge so I don't know if my experience will have been different than if I had a regular Family Court Judge.