Is court worth it over lack of communication?

[Mess]

Only a small percentage of court applications actually go to trial. You don't know what your situation will be so your approach should be, make every step as though you are going to trial, cross all your t's and dot all your i's and make sure you always have a reasonable offer on the table.

Keep control of your lawyer and keep control of your file and keep control of your costs. Don't go to court being extra adversarial just because your lawyer pushes you. Go and seek what you believe is best for you and your children.

Use the opportunity of court applications to get full financial disclosure and supporting statements from your ex. Go over it with a magnifying glass YOURSELF, don't pay your lawyer's office to do a half-ass job by someone who knows nothing about your ex. If anything is missing or inaccurate, don't get into an endless back and forth exchange by your lawyer that costs you $100 for every letter sent. Wait for the case conference, point out to the judge the lack of disclosure and get a court order for her to do the proper financial disclosue. This way you use the time in court and get something out of it, and have an order on record that she was submitting inaccurate financials.

If you are considering mediation, wait until the case conference and ask the judge for court ordered mediation. The judge will love that, it gets the case off of their desk.

If you do your research and learn as much as you can, use a lawyer to get you started and get all your forms filed and in order, then consider representing yourself. You know your situation better than a lawyer that spends 10 minutes listening to you and 50 minutes talking at you. But this is according to your comfort level. Self-rep is full time job and equivalent to a full course load at school learning what you have to do. Many do it and you can be successful, just make sure you are organized, organized, organized.

You can avoid trial altogether if you can get your ex to agree to arbitration or mediation-arbitration. But use the court process to get everthing disclosed and on the table. You can make good use of your ex's court reply to know exactly what arguments she has (or thinks she has) and how to contradict them. If you walk into mediation cold, you will get blindsided and have to think on your feet, if you have the court responses in hand you can go over them and get the facts straight to make your arguments.

[winterwolf7]

Thanks Mess. I had a similar talk from a coworker who has gone through it all and it definitely changed my approach. You really need to keep your lawyer on a short leash or they tend to go crazy. My legal fees have dropped from 3k per month to below 1k, but it's still much too much to continue for long.

I will scale back on the court application a bit, once I see what my lawyer has in mind, and try to stick to the basics if she has embellished.

Based on my X's personality and her behaviour so far it is much more likely that mediation will fail. She has a history of being stubborn and never compromising, it's one of the reasons why we ended up where we are.

Her lawyer is away on vacation for a few more weeks anyways, delaying everything. It will be interesting to see her approach. She knows the system as well as any lawyer and I doubt she will encourage her client to go to court for no gain... but those lawyers, they love their $$$. :P

[winterwolf7]

Short update: My son was just diagnosed as autistic, my X changed to her third lawyer and after another month we had a reply from her new lawyer which was just a restatement of the exact same unreasonable demands as before without budging an inch on any issues, AND asking for her spousal to be increased from the median amount to higher.

Court application has been filed, and first case conference is scheduled for early August. I'm still tormented by this choice literally daily, but it still seems like the best option left.

[winterwolf7]

Interesting update. I indicate to my ex that I would be moving soon and that I still had a lot of compromises I wanted to communicate with her but that since she wouldn't attend mediation I was at a loss with how to present them to her. She had been under the impression that since I had filed for court I wasn't going to negotiate anymore. She appealed to me to send her my suggestions directly, without lawyers or mediators. Finally after 11 months just by talking directly (through e-mail) and listening to the other person's reasons for their position we were able to come to a compromise on nearly all issues in just a few e-mails.

We both admitted our frustration with the legal system and how badly our lawyers had failed to help resolve anything.

I put together a draft separation agreement for everyone's review incorporating our discussions.

We seem to be in agreement:

-Joint custody (this was my "golden apple")
-A small reduction in spousal support, and that spousal support will not increase based on changes to my salary post-separation.
-Spousal until the child is in school full time (3 years total, reasonable for a 6 year marriage).
-She gave up her claims for property, arrears, occupation rent.
-I agreed to give her half her house down-payment back in equalization. (her golden apple)

It's just a draft agreement right now, and we still have court in two weeks, but this is still a big step forwards. I'm not happy with everything in the agreement, maybe we can work on a few of the smaller details still, but at least the big items can be settled.