Finally, the trial begins. I have wanted this for so very long, and yet never wanted this day to come. Lots of fears of the unknown. I want to share the details with the forum because the forum has been a great help to me. Maybe lessons I learn will help others.
I can't get into details of court house or justice, but I am the Applicant in Ontario and I filed to vary spousal support down due to reduction in income. There are no kids. I first filed 15 months ago: we've had several conferences, several motions on ordering evidence, trial management conference and exit pre-trial. We are both self rep litigants (SRL).
Yesterday morning I went to the court house to watch a trial in action - needed special dispensation to do that. Watching that helped me feel more at ease with trial beginning today.
We started today and the justice got right into it. We had both prepared opening statements - the justice took copies and adjourned to read them instead of having oral statements.
After a few procedural items, we jumped into my testimony - about 6 hours.
The trial and evidence books add up to over 1200 pages. A lot of it is back and forth recriminations in emails, letters, etc over the years. The justice wants very little to do with it. S/he's isolated the issues for trial: what evidence is crucial to the trial matter, and what of that evidence is in dispute and needs resolution.
1. Being on the stand for hours was interesting - I just told my story and pulled in evidence where needed.
2. If I presented anything not material to the case - the justice asked to skip it.
3. With any evidence presented, the justice asked if either party challenged it. If either did challenge, s/he asked under what basis and then sought rapid agreement.
4. We both got on the justice's good side: the justice said that s/he had never had such well prepared, organized self represents in his court room. It predisposed the justice to work with us.
The justice's desire to clear out irrelevant evidence has helped me a lot, because I didn't want a needless, distracting war of emails and letters in court. I posed that exact issue in my opening statement and I think the justice recognized it.
I go back on the stand for cross next week, then the justice wants to review the case status with us before going into other testimony. The justice wants us to find settlement and end the trial before consuming more expensive court days. That's fine by me. Hopefully the ex sees that.
Lessons to SRLs: be very organized all the time, don't obsess on scoring small points - go for the big win.
I'll write about day 2 after the cross exam.
FG
I can't get into details of court house or justice, but I am the Applicant in Ontario and I filed to vary spousal support down due to reduction in income. There are no kids. I first filed 15 months ago: we've had several conferences, several motions on ordering evidence, trial management conference and exit pre-trial. We are both self rep litigants (SRL).
Yesterday morning I went to the court house to watch a trial in action - needed special dispensation to do that. Watching that helped me feel more at ease with trial beginning today.
We started today and the justice got right into it. We had both prepared opening statements - the justice took copies and adjourned to read them instead of having oral statements.
After a few procedural items, we jumped into my testimony - about 6 hours.
The trial and evidence books add up to over 1200 pages. A lot of it is back and forth recriminations in emails, letters, etc over the years. The justice wants very little to do with it. S/he's isolated the issues for trial: what evidence is crucial to the trial matter, and what of that evidence is in dispute and needs resolution.
1. Being on the stand for hours was interesting - I just told my story and pulled in evidence where needed.
2. If I presented anything not material to the case - the justice asked to skip it.
3. With any evidence presented, the justice asked if either party challenged it. If either did challenge, s/he asked under what basis and then sought rapid agreement.
4. We both got on the justice's good side: the justice said that s/he had never had such well prepared, organized self represents in his court room. It predisposed the justice to work with us.
The justice's desire to clear out irrelevant evidence has helped me a lot, because I didn't want a needless, distracting war of emails and letters in court. I posed that exact issue in my opening statement and I think the justice recognized it.
I go back on the stand for cross next week, then the justice wants to review the case status with us before going into other testimony. The justice wants us to find settlement and end the trial before consuming more expensive court days. That's fine by me. Hopefully the ex sees that.
Lessons to SRLs: be very organized all the time, don't obsess on scoring small points - go for the big win.
I'll write about day 2 after the cross exam.
FG
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