Insiders’ Guide to Gathering & Presenting Evidence in a Family Law Case

good morning welcome welcome to our Facebook live event and hello to all the tick tock Universe um for those of you who are on Tick Tock if you want to be see these events and see their schedule in advance go ahead and head over to our Facebook group which is called decode your divorce Arizona support group and today's topic is going to be a great one we're going to be talking about Gathering evidence and getting exhibits into court this Series has all has been about how to um tell your story present your case talk to a judge and today is going to be crucial I just want to welcome Julie lebens my co-host and Brianna Deboer thank you both for being here hey Billy great to be here again yeah so Julie do you want to give a quick overview of your background before we get started sure so um I'm a lawyer I'm licensed to practice in Arizona I've been a trial lawyer since 2006. um I've handled all sorts of different types of cases in court but for the last I don't know five plus years I've been more focused just on family law even though family law has been a part of my practice since 2009 um and yeah there's there's a lot of hearings potentially in Family Court especially if you're not engaging in negotiations in a really strong way so there's a lot of cases that can go to court I know that a lot of people out there are facing false accusations and things like that where you know negotiations have completely broken down and they're having to go to the judge and what is the evidence that could be presented to help them overcome you know a lot of false accusations and things like that especially when you know like time with your kids is on the line and things that are really important so that's a little bit about me I also just wanted to take a moment to um let everybody know that at least from my perspective like the energies lately have been really intense um I'm up in Sedona so you know I'm into that kind of stuff but um it's a full moon tonight and I gotta tell you I feel like I just can't cut you know catch a break these days and I'm I'm wondering you know feel free to add in the chat if you're feeling the same and you know at times it's like going into this victimhood like oh why is this happening to me and kind of feeling bad for myself and then there's also like this Fear Factor like what's next oh my gosh like oh my what I oh my God you know and getting really scared about what's next and what I'm finding is that I'm needing to just stay really present [Music] and listen to what messages are coming through through these problems that are happening instead of going into the why me or the what's next really connecting with okay you know this is actually a problem that needs some attention and what can I start doing to address it instead of going into guilt blame shame fear um but I I gotta tell you and I don't know if others are feeling this but it's been super intense I'm hoping things start to shift um I'm like not even making any plans at this point because everything is just not working out for me right now so I just had a feeling that maybe some of you out there going through family law problems or maybe feeling the same thing um this is a full moon in Gemini which does relate to children so maybe some really serious issues related to your kids are coming up I know I've had some of that personally and it's been very painful um so we're with you we feel you and you'll get through it and if you can connect to this moment maybe that can be helpful as well so Billy any thoughts well I appreciate you sharing that I can tell you we've gotten tremendous feedback about these lives being very very helpful to people we're able to go much more in depth in this type of conversation than we can in a quick video or in a comment or a discussion on Facebook so it really allows us to uh to to talk about the nuance and and the law is really all about the Nuance so that's what we're going to do today we've got our topic which is gathering evidence and presenting evidence in court and then as always we'll have time for Q a so go ahead and send over your questions um and we will do our best to answer them but first we're going to spend you know about 25 to 30 minutes talking about evidence you mentioned that um there's a lot of hearings and I think one of the things that people lose sight of is that this is litigation and in litigation it means you can't just show up and tell the judge your story and call it good you have an obligation to gather evidence that supports your point now we last time we talked about how to come up with your story how to tell that story but once you decide what story you want to tell how do you determine what evidence you need or where to get it so first I just want to give some quick little disclaimers and I'll jump into that answer but by being a part of this live or um you know asking questions even Billy and I don't become your lawyer um also we're only providing Legal Information we can't provide legal advice in this type of setting it's just it's not possible so this is just information we're not telling you what to do you have to make your own decisions and we're licensed in Arizona so this is about Arizona law um yeah you know evidence I one thing to be really cognizant of is thinking about things from the judge's perspective and if the judge is receiving evidence where Dad is saying one thing and Mom is saying another you've got kind of you know think of the scales of Justice you've got equal scales right and so you're looking to bring in evidence to help tip those scales in your favor and that evidence that could tip the scales in your favor can sometimes be very simple evidence to gather it could be a secondary witness who's cooperating your side of the story and then boom there's more evidence on your side than the other and you become more credible because of that secondary you know cooperating witness um or it could be something more complex depending on the case but it's something to be cognizant of that you know you've got a judge who who doesn't know you who doesn't wasn't there for maybe some event that is disputed about what the exact facts are so how can you show that your facts are true um also um let's talk about what is evidence because I get a lot of confusion from clients thinking that they can't like their words are not evidence but testimony sworn under oath testimony is evidence okay you can have documents to support it you could have audio recordings or video recordings as additional evidence to support your testimony but your testimony is evidence so keep that in mind it's not just like oh whatever I just have some stuff to say and it's not that big of a deal no it is a big of a deal it is a big deal that's one of the things that the judge can base his or her findings on um so understanding that and then also understanding this Con this concept of speculation when you're testifying you want to be in a position where you're testifying about events that happened that you're not speculating about what may or may not have happened so even if you know that um if you ask your co-parent you know to help or to take some additional parenting time or to just exercise their parenting time that's been court ordered that they're going to refuse or not communicate you still need to take the steps to ask because if you're going to go to court and be like Oh but they always refuse they're going to come in and testify oh but if he or she would have asked me I would have taken the time and then your point isn't made even though you're like oh but they're lying the evidence before the judge is you never asked and they said if you had asked they would have taken it so now your point isn't proven so you've got to think about that don't go in with these preconceived notions you've got a third party person the judge who you need to show how this person is not just talk about it in general terms based on what happened five years ago one of the most important things to determine is which facts are Undisputed the two of you agree on them they're uncontested and there's a whole section in your pre-trial statement where you put and you write down the uncontested facts and that should be a large section but determining what do we agree on and what facts don't we agree on is pretty critical to determining what evidence you need because if you know that you're going to talk about what happened on XYZ date in different ways you're going to say x he's going to say why or what not then you have your skills of Justice right here and you need more evidence what could that be it could be text messages it could be emails it could be another witness it could be an admission or testimony in a deposition there's a lot of ways to come up with evidence so and one of the things that you wrote down here that we're going to talk about is demonstrative exhibits can you explain what a demonstrative exhibit is right so it sounds really confusing you know the word demonstrative you know like a big legal term but it's actually quite simple this is an exhibit that you create to illustrate a point you're trying to make so for example you can take your proposed parenting plan and instead of taking 20 minutes to testify about every single pick up drop off change and everything that happens with the holidays you can have it on one to three pieces of paper you know depending on how detailed your plan is and have that as one of your exhibits and then boom you can just testify about the nuances you know maybe the the really big points that are in dispute about the parenting plan you could just focus on those and then the judge has a document that the judge can take and look at and doesn't have to remember or be furiously writing or typing what your proposed plan is so some of it can be very simple you know taking your parenting plan or your child support worksheet and showing where your numbers are coming from um or for example if you have what's called a community lien interest you you live during your marriage in your husband or wife's house and they owned it separately it was not bought during the marriage they owned it prior it's their separate property but you were together for 10 you know you're married for 10 years and you paid down the mortgage during that time and made improvements you can make a claim called a community lien claim and there's a calculation called the draw host calculation and so rather than testifying to all these different pieces you can have a one-page summary of your draw host calculation to go to the judge what about a child support arrears argument summarize what's owed so this is what we're saying make it really simple you can take points that could take a long time to explain and put them into a one to two page document yeah it's essentially a summary and there are some rules so I just want to go back to Julie's example about when you said in her example she said you said I know that she's not going to take parental time because she's always refused in the past one wonderful demonstrative exhibit and Julie said you need to ask one really beautiful demonstrative exhibit would be a chart that has the date you asked and the times that Mom didn't show up for parenting time now if you want to get that admitted um there are special rules if it's a demonstrative exhibit it means it's something that you've created to demonstrate or summarize the evidence that you're offering that means you must make available to the court along with that demonstrative exhibit every single correspondence that you have cited in your chart so you've got a chart that says these are all the dates mom didn't show up and then you've got every email or every text message that corresponds with the chart then you would testify to that and think about how much better that is for the judge instead of handing the judge a stack of 50 pages of Correspondence and being like okay judge you review this you've got a nice summary to look at and the judge can flip back and confirm the summary is accurate by looking at these supporting documents but otherwise the judge is having to make their own summary because you can't go through 50 text messages and remember every single point you've got to make a summary of it so making this easier for your judge and Billy's exactly right you need to have the supporting documentation so if you're making a child support argument about what you did and didn't receive from the other side do the summary but attach the bank statements right or attach the checks or you know however the payments were made um have a summary with what the point you're trying to make uh and that's imposing party tries to get in a demonstrative exhibit without making every single document available that's a great time for you to object because that's not okay and you want to make it very easy for the judge so in your table I would suggest you then cite to the page number on the exhibit that has the evidence you want you want to make this so Crystal Clear for the judge and you know what this does when you are so prepared and you present your evidence in a way that is so easy for them to consume do you know what you get the benefit of the doubt we've tipped the scale a little because you seem so prepared you have everything so well laid out that the judges automatically going to be more inclined to trust that than somebody who's all over the place and doesn't have any exhibits and says well I've got it it's just not here like you just can't be that person at the same time sometimes it can be really frustrating because you can go in completely prepared and the unprepared person sometimes quote unquote wins and I've had that happen throughout my career either a self-represented party or an attorney that just has not put in the time and effort that I did and yet they end up winning and it's just you know sometimes your facts just aren't that great just despite all of the preparation so do you still do the preparation yes but unfortunately the outcome is out of everybody's hands you know it's up to a judge at that point and you don't know what the judge is going to do and and sometimes that can be a really tough pill to swallow absolutely let's go back to our example let's say you have a chart that says that Mom didn't show up you know eight out of the ten last time but mom shows up and she says but I've moved I've I've changed my life I have a new job now I have reliable transportation I can get there the judge may very well say yes I believe you that Mom didn't show up eight out of 10 times and I'm still not going to change parenting time because Mom testified that she moved and she got a new car and uh we still believe that it's in the best interest of the children to continue to have the parenting time that even though mom didn't exercise it that is an absolute possibility definitely um your evidence must be disclosed to the other side before in order for it to be admissible now can you explain what disclosed and admissible means so disclosure is something that happens outside the courtroom outside the clerk's office you don't file your disclosure with the court this is information and evidence that is exchanged between the two sides to give each side notice of what's coming now it didn't always work this way there used to be like surprise evidence where you could just bring it the day of trial and eventually the courts were like you know this just is not efficient and it's they changed everything and they made it so now you know think of playing poker like you got to show your hand you can't hide it and then show it at trial you have to put your cards on the table generally at least 30 days before trial there's various disclosure deadlines depending on what type of case you have but you need to get that out there and it doesn't go to the judge but it goes to the other side and it needs to be all of the documents you intend to use documents videos audios any sort of exhibits you plan to use plus a list of your Witnesses and a you know their contact information and a brief summary of what they're going to talk about that's going to be required if you don't do that you face the problem of that evidence or the that witness being rejected at the time of your hearing because you know for non-disclosure reasons and Brianna I just wanted to say out loud so we don't forget we have very recently put together a chart a really great chart that explains what must be disclosed and when under rule 49 let's make sure to put that on the Facebook page so that anybody can download it and it makes it very clear what you must disclose because there are things that you must disclose regardless of whether or not you want to use it as evidence and you have to disclose anything that you might want to use as evidence mm-hmm so you got to get your disclosure done and then also be aware that the Court's going to have their own rules for submitting exhibits to the court and the judges are so serious about these rules so you really need to know what your rules are and abide by them be that talking to the judicial assistant or talking to the clerk's office or getting information online from the Court's website um but you need to comply with these exhibit deadlines and in preparing your exhibits to go to the court if you have an exhibit that's more you know more than one page staple it together all right you don't want to have you or your witness up there with you know 20 Pages loose that's one exhibit it's it's it's too difficult and it's going to eat up a ton of your time while you're trying to manage 20 loose pieces of paper add page numbers on the bottom right corner if you've got a 20-page exhibit and the information that's important is on page nine you should have it numbered and then the part you want to focus on that should be highlighted as well again whether it's you testifying or you're presenting this document to one of your Witnesses they're going to struggle figuring out where page 9 is and finding the exact paragraph you're focusing on unless it's made really simple for them because remember you or your witness are already nervous up there testifying you know everybody's looking at you while you're talking it's the judge it's a serious courtroom situation make it simple and it takes a lot of pre-planning so I would start you know especially for somebody who has no experience um submitting exhibits to the court I would start at least 30 days before the exhibit deadline getting all my copies made you gotta give a copy of your exhibits to the other side um making sure everything's numbered stapled and highlighted um and is all pursuant to what the judge wants and then I probably just if this was my first time I would look to submit my exhibits a day or two before the actual deadline because what if you go to submit them and the clerk is like oh wait you did this wrong and you need to correct 10 things if you're on your day of the deadline yikes but if you've got two more days because you did it early that you can correct it and get it in great also sometimes counting the days is confusing because the court sometimes counts weekends and holidays and other times doesn't and so that's another thing too by going a few days early if there's any question about the final deadline because of a holiday or weekend or something weird you can just take out any sort of potential controversy by filing a day or two early [Music] yeah those are great points um it is not easy to represent yourself it is not there's a lot to know and because there's a lot at stake that is why we are giving such detailed information um now many of you know that we are launching a live course and community that is called win without law school dedicated to people representing themselves we will be able to go over this in detail people will be able to take the courses watch the recorded courses and really get assistance if you're representing yourself but we're not gatekeeping information here we're giving it we're giving you a lot of it for free now so one of your your points also is that you must actually gather evidence not just seek to present speculative evidence tell me what you mean by that right so we've talked about this a little bit you just can't say well judge they always don't take their parenting time or they've never paid child support or um you know they they don't call at the time that they're supposed to you know when the kids with me or something like that like you need to actually gather the evidence show that they didn't call or make that request um you can't just say oh well this is how they've always acted so judge fine that they would have done the same thing yeah that's not going to work but one other point that I do want to touch upon is how to get an exhibit admitted into evidence because this is it's actually really simple once you understand it but when you don't understand it it's super confusing and it's weird it's like a weird process I remember even learning it for the first time and being like oh this is awkward and and you know it's kind of like each little piece you're doing so you're kind of making a little pride and then finally move to admit so there's a lot to it still it's still awkward even for me now um but before before we talk about how to actually introduce your your exhibit one thing that I think a lot of people don't understand is that okay okay so we talked about how you submit your um your exhibits to the clerk before trial now many people think the Judge should have reviewed those exhibits before you present your evidence they do not like public service announcement and they're not supposed to they're not allowed to the judge is not allowed to look at your exhibits prior to trial if you want your judge to look at any of the evidence that you have given to the clerk that you are that you want to present you have to go through the process that Julie is going to tell you about now that is different from the pre-trial statement the court should have read the pre-trial statement now your pre-trial statement we've talked about in other lives and you can go back and watch those uh if you have questions on it but so everybody knows the judge has not looked at a shred of evidence so now here we are we're in court how do you get the judge to actually look at the evidence it's a really good point Billy people think that they file their exhibits with the court and the judge looks at them but the judge can't and so instead there's going it's there's going to be a stack or a box that's organized with files with the various exhibits in the courtroom near the clerk and every document that is in that pilot in that box that you want the judge to see you're going to need to present as an exhibit through one of your Witnesses and of course you could be a witness you likely will be a witness so you could be your own witness and then if you have any other Witnesses you need to get these exhibits admitted through your Witnesses now prior to the trial you can reach out to the other side and see if you can stipulate to the admission of any exhibits that's the easiest way to go you gotta do that step because if you can if you can mutually say up I'll agree all yours get admitted I agree on mine of course if that's in the best interest of your case um that's super simple then just everything comes in you don't have to worry about doing this song and dance about getting stuff admitted but for any or all of the exhibits that have not been stipulated as being automatically admitted you'll need to first of all present the exhibit to the witness and that you can present it to yourself if you're testifying so okay if if you're presenting I'm handing the witness exhibit one or if you're testifying judge I'm going to talk about exhibit one now if you're asking the question first of all you need to identify it they're what the witness does what is exhibit one and the witness shouldn't start reading from the document necessarily but they need to give a short little summary of what it is so it's a warranty deed to the marital home or this is my proposed parenting plan or this is the child support worksheet I would like the court to adopt you know something just go ahead this may be easier as an example so let's pretend I'm I'm the witness show people what you have to do as the either the attorney or the self-representing party to get the document admitted and understand the judge cannot look at the document unless it's admitted so I'm the witness okay I'm handing you what's been marked as exhibit one thank you can you please explain what exhibit one is exhibit one is my Affidavit of financial information is this a fair and accurate copy of your AFI yes it is I completed the AFI on this date I did it myself I can attest to its truthfulness move to admit exhibit one now the judge can look at the AFI and the AFI might have been a bad example because those have to be filed so the judge actually would have already looked at that but let's say she had handed me an email I would have to say yes this is an email that I wrote to my ex about blah blah blah blah but Billy let's let's talk about how it usually goes so what is exhibit one it's an email okay what's the date that it was sent and then this should be highlighted okay so the witness can look exactly to the date oh this was set on November 30th 2022. oh who was the sender Billy taurasio who is the recipient Julie lebens what was the title of the email stop harassing me or whatever um is this a fair and accurate copy of the November 30th 2022 email that you received from Billy taurasio yes move to admit right so when you get this document you have to describe it why it's accurate and then the other side has the opportunity to object to the admission of that exhibit and there's a multitude of reasons that you could object if you're both representing yourselves uh then this might not come up and we'll have to do a different live on the Rules of Evidence surrounding that but that's the process for getting documents admitted and if you don't admit a document that you've already submitted to the clerk it goes back to you and you take it home the judge never looks at it so it's really important to like if you've narrowed down your exhibits to five and you know you want to get those five in you need a plan for that if you've kind of oh you know you've done 20 exhibits and some of them are there just in case something comes up but you don't really need them then you should be highlighting like of those 20 what are the ones you definitely want to get in and make sure that you do a couple of other things just about preparing and organizing um so you should be making a trial notebook for yourself I I like a three ring binder and in that is a copy of your exhibits and the other side's exhibits because remember the exhibits you filed with the court are going to be going to the witness and if you're wanting to read something off of that exhibit after it's been admitted you're not going to go to the witness and grab it back from them and read it or have or maybe you know you just need to know where to look on the page to direct the witness to read a particular paragraph like you should have a copy in front of you too and also you can make what's called a bench book for the judge so that you can also provide the judge with a copy of all of your exhibits in a notebook you know ordered and everything um for the judge to be looking at while the testimony is being given some I've had a couple of Judges that don't want bench bench books but that's been very rare most of them want a bench book because they want to be able to look at the document that's being testified about in real time yeah and some some judges in Maricopa County are just using the electronic copy and they don't watch bench books but each judge at least in Maricopa County has a page on the courthouse website that tells you what their rules are and it's very helpful to do things the way that they want you to do them we do have a lot of questions to get to anything else you want to cover on evidence that wraps it up evidence it's more complicated than it looks and really it's it's about a lot of advanced planning yes absolutely and practicing I think um you cannot underestimate the importance of practicing you have a very limited time you have exhibits you have to say you know move to admit which I forget and I have been a lawyer for 17 years and somebody will start testifying about a document and I'll be like oh did I move to admit that exhibit so it happens you're going to want to practice all right first question today in what instances can a party be awarded legal fees we've been in a custody battle since May of 2021 and dad and his attorney have dragged it out and it's resulted in costing me thousands in legal fees judges hate legal fees disputes they deal with them but keep that in mind like just coming in and complaining that they've dragged things out is not going to be the most compelling to the judge it I'm not saying it's not an argument to be made but it's not your one and only argument so first of all there's a statute for legal fees it's 25-324 and it applies in divorce cases and custody cases and it looks at two factors it asks the judge to look at number one what are the financial resources of each party and that's going to be really relying on that document that Affidavit of financial information that each party is supposed to file that's one of the biggest pieces of evidence the judge is going to look at to determine Financial Resources but there's obviously resources outside of just the AFI so there's more evidence that can be presented on that issue um and the second part of 25-324 is reasonableness of positions taken throughout the case now this is something where the party's definition of reasonableness and the judges is usually completely different from the judge's perspective and the case law that is controlling the judge's perspective the the courts are supposed to look at not just taking a position that's opposite of the other side like just because you disagree that doesn't mean that you're unreasonable but if your disagreement is contrary to law or if you're refusing to follow the rules of procedure like you aren't doing disclosure you're just like no I'm not going to give you anything um then the courts are more apt to award legal fees but just because you think the other side's been stupid or drugged this out like the Court's gonna be like well welcome to litigation right yeah it's a it's a hard thing in what instances can they be awarded legal fees there's two reasons either a disparity of income one person makes a lot more money than the other and in that case you might be on hook for paying their attorney's fees regardless of reasonableness or a portion of their link fees or unreasonableness and like Julie said that um what percentage of your cases would you say a judge orders somebody to pay legal fees based on unreasonableness it's a low percentage like very low um but it's a it's a it's an egregious situation is when I do get an award of attorneys fees and it's for it's usually for a discovery violation you know they're just not producing documents that are really relevant to a disputed issue um or I mean I can't I'm trying to think of like a legal issue where there's a dispute that's completely unreasonable you know that that one's tough because you could think oh they're asking for sole legal decision making and and there's no basis for it and that's unreasonable and the judge may be like oh you guys just disagree you know it's okay that they ask for that that's not unreasonable or a judge might find it unreasonable yeah it just depends yeah I would say in my cases maybe 30 of the time attorney's fees are awarded so I think it's more common in Maricopa County than it sounds like it is in Yavapai County or Coconino where you practice yeah you have a pie mostly the other thing to consider with legal fees is if you are awarded fees you get a judgment okay you get a piece of paper that you then have to convert into money the Jud the court and the judge doesn't like stick their hand in the other side's pocket or bank account and hand you the money instead they just give you a judgment and you have to collect on the judgment and depending on the search the situation collecting on the Judgment maybe extreme really difficult to Impossible so it's like you can get this beautiful attorney's fees award but depending on the situation the financial situation the other side you may or may not be able to actually collect [Music] the next question we've got today is me and my ex have 50 50 custody I just got a modification for child support for almost 1800 a month my ex does not see or speak to our children at all so I'm really not trying to change the parenting time or any of that because I don't think it would be worth it not a can of worms that I'm trying to open but I need my kids passports I have sent emails and text messages for about a month and my question is can I ask the court for permission to obtain passports uh for my children and if so what paperwork do I file have you dealt with this issue before definitely yeah what are your thoughts on this so if you have joint legal decision making you're not you can't go get the a passport for your children without the other parents signature if you have sole legal decision making then you are allowed to get a passport without the signature of the other parent um that you can file in court to specifically request that parents cooperate to get passports I like to do this in a divorce if kids don't already have passports I want to get in front of this issue um but if we are post divorce then and you've got a trip coming up you're going to have to file you're gonna have to file and request the court have this person sign those paperwork then you need to determine is this person likely to show up or not if they are likely to show up I want the paperwork with me in court at that moment so that you can get the signature um and then some judges because otherwise what you're going to do if they don't show up you're going to get an order that says perhaps you know in this case Dad has to sign the passport paperwork that is basically as useful as the Judgment that Julie just talked about it's a piece of paper it's not going to make it happen so you really got to determine what's going on and I I take these cases situation by situation sometimes a demand letter from a lawyer or a call from a lawyer and then sending a mobile notary along with the paperwork is the best way to go it's going to be cheaper and faster than filing something in court so it's really a practical problem that we have to come up with a solution for and it might be a legal solution but it might just be a different type of solution yeah and you know when you talked about um getting in front of it with the divorce decree if you've got a situation where there is language in the divorce decree requiring both parents to cooperate and sign off for passports then you're looking at an enforcement action right you're looking at enforcing that term on the other side if you don't have that term in your decree then you're looking at asking the court to order the other side based on joint legal decision making what's best for the kids but the other side could come in with some objections to the travel for some reason and you know who knows if the judge will do it but I think Billy's point is also sound if you're all out of hearing and there's a piece of paper that you could get signed right there because there's notaries at the court if it needs a notarization you can potentially do that right then and there but it's a tough one um especially if you've got another parent who is claiming you're going to kidnap the kids and not return them abroad and stuff like that um you know a judge may be like well you know I don't want anything bad to happen so I'll just you know you just don't know what's going to happen especially if you have somebody making a lot of allegations against you absolutely um the next question we've got is I've not yet filed so I'm gathering information on how I can be efficient and prepared for the attorney that I'd like to hire good for you so smart what is the best way to organize evidence in a clear concise manner to present to your attorney or better yet some possible background information on how an attorney uses and decides which evidence to use once it's received from the client that would be helpful in my understanding of how to organize the evidence and what is factually important versus the moments I don't like but they're not relevant well first of all thank you for the very intelligent conversation and question obviously you are really getting your ducks in a row Julie what do you think of that question so yeah it's a great question and um as far as getting organized I would say um start with a timeline I find this to be so helpful and it's really like okay um January 2007 married you know the you know um February 2010 first child born you know you know it just giving this chronological history of of course those important events of marriage and kids being born but also other things that are related to issues in your case so this is when we bought our house this is you know what happened you know anything that is important in the case to start doing a timeline that can be really helpful and then you can sit down with the attorney talk about the timeline identify the issues in your case and then start ident making lists of you know what is the evidence that's going to be helpful to prove this and is it something that's already been created that already exists or is it something that we want to start creating going forward so in for example like a parenting time a case of the parenting time dispute you may want to start keeping a journal what you know what's happening with parenting time on a weekend week out basis Because by the time you see the judge maybe six months have passed and now you have a record of what happened instead of just being like well you know we did this I think and that and you know it's it's like you've you've got a really clear record and it also builds your credibility I think in the eyes of the judge it's not just this is what I remember no here's my written record of what happened that I kept in real time which I think can help with the credibility absolutely and one of the tools we created for this exact purpose is a divorce planner that you can download from the Facebook group it has a place for you to fill out items of personal property that you want items that you want to go to him your pre-divorce budget your post-divorce budget a list a place where you can list your assets your kids names and birthdays this is a journal for you it also has a calendar in it where you can write down any notes about what happened at any exchanges this is a tool for you to stay organized to stay focused to plan but also an excellent way to communicate organ to communicate information to your attorney in an organized fashion so definitely check that out lots more questions to get to fathers out of state we're not married but he's on the birth certificate what can I do for a parenting plan my child's 17 months old and I'd like to keep him here in Arizona I'd like to keep him here in Arizona it's too much for him he keeps bothering me to continue to rotate which is impossible for me what rights do I have okay so dad is out of state the child is 17 months old and dad wants to rotate the child's residence from Arizona to out of state at 17 months and she wants to know what rights she has well um do you have an open case going are you looking to file um I mean right now your mom and you're unmarried he's on the birth certificate um but you know if there's no court orders in place um you know there's nothing that's forcing you to agree or to give him certain amount of time and you know this is something this type of question would be really good for a consultation because there's so many nuances here like is this a situation where you should immediately go and file and try to get a court order or is it like ah you know what maybe it'd be best to kind of wait a little bit because I'd like to go when the child's a little older or when a certain situation is unfolded like there's a lot of just nuances about your situation that would play into this question of whether or not to seek to establish decision making parenting time and child support at this juncture if that's best for you or not but ultimately that's the way to resolve this issue if you guys can't reach a parenting plan that's agreeable um is to have the judge decide now oftentimes what I find is that the non-custo you know the parent that has doesn't have the kid the majority of the time is maybe making proposals for equal time not that they really want the equal time but in an effort to reduce or minimize child support and so that may be his motivation here he may be asking for this kind of crazy parenting plan for a 17 month old where you have you know a long distance situation because he's concerned about what child support may be so one potential technique here is to make a settlement offer that is your parenting plan but that agrees to reduce child support or make it a number that is workable for him so that you have a guaranteed outcome and then his needs are met with child support on the flip side if you're like I need the full child support I think I'm entitled to this plan you can take it to the judge but you know I don't know what the ultimate decision will be of the judge I've seen in particular I've seen a judge where they decide oh even though it's a lot of travel for the little one before the kid gets into school this is the time where they could spend more time with the long distance parents so they actually order a pretty crazy travel schedule for a little one being like Oh well this is going to change when they get into school so let's do this now to give them time with that other parent and then I've had other judges who have been like no that's totally crazy the kid's going to be with the one parent the majority of the time and the out-of-state parent can come and visit the child while they're this little and spend parenting time in their Community you just don't know how a judge is going to rule yes yes and these situations here's what you need to know you need to know that um right now as an unmarried parent you have de facto Soul legal decision making okay you don't have to do anything but there are consequences to whatever choices you make and the other thing that you really should keep in mind is the uccjaa which is which state will have jurisdiction over the case you said you would love to keep him here in Arizona then it because you said that it is very important that your 17 month old lives primarily in Arizona so when you're deciding you know when you two are working out how much time that your little one is going to spend outside of Arizona it's just something to keep in mind but I will agree with Julie that this is the type of situation where a consultation would be important because there's a lot of nuance um next question can you do um can you do an example of how to submit evidence without Witnesses okay so you're always going to have a witness to get the evidence in through I'm guessing I don't know if you're interpreting this question differently but you may be your only witness so maybe that's you know thinking oh well I don't have a witness not thinking that you are your own witness and so you can you should in fact in most situations take the stand and testify and can have documents admitted into evidence while you're testifying using the process we talked about earlier yes you testify you say here's exhibit one this is my blah blah blah I'd move to admit it so you just do it you just monologue what Julie and I did there's another question here that came up on Tick Tock that I want to address because I it really bothers me and it says is it illegal for mom's boyfriend to hit my son as punishment yeah it is I mean nobody I agree I agree nobody has the yeah sorry keep going yeah it's the proving it is what can be frustrating and challenging because if the other side's denying it and the only evidence is what the child is saying unless there's a physical you know evidence you know there's a bruise there's a red mark there's there's something to corroborate what this child is saying then it can be really tough to prove and this is another thing where you're going to be wanting you're going to want to gather this evidence If the child comes home with the bruise that they didn't have before or you know inflammation or red mark some evidence of physical abuse you need to take a picture a video you know you need to gather this evidence so that you can show what you saw yeah if it were me I would come out swinging I would write my co-parent and let them know hey my child told me that your boyfriend hit them I am a mandatory reporter as parents we are mandatory reporters as parents and then at that point I would either report it or I would tell the other parent I would ask them did this happen are you allowing this I want to make sure that I have the information I need before I determine what to do next if it were me I would flag for that co-parent that it will not be tolerated and you have options as a parent you can call DCS and you have to if you think your child is being abused as a mandatory reporter you could also secure an order of protection if you had enough evidence you could file something in family court and even if I agree with Julie the proving it is hard but it is not hard to make it very clear immediately that you're going to do whatever it takes to protect your child and I do think that we have a lot of influence over our child's Behavior with how we signal we're going to respond to certain things so if your co-parent is you know at all reasonable and rational and doesn't want to get her children taken away she's going to talk to her boyfriend hopefully and set some boundaries and if she can't you need to know that right now and get your kid out of a very dangerous situation so I hope that that helps and Billy I think that you made a really good point which is to reach out to the other side and open up a dialogue because you know especially if it's a young kid you don't always know if exactly if what's being said is exactly accurate right and so on that's where I would start is reaching out to the co-parent and saying hey you know Johnny came home after co-parenting and he had this bruise and he's telling me this story and I'm really upset what happened here yes yes you know what you're doing there you're creating evidence you're being a responsible parent like you're doing a lot of things by asking questions um even if you know you're not going to get an answer even if you think you're going to get a bad answer even if you think that they're going to be mad at you or mad at the child you have to document this because you need the evidence and that's such a good point even if you know they're gonna hang up the phone on you or Janaya you need that this goes into our point about speculation you need to gather the evidence look I called them to talk about this serious concern and they hung up on me right like that's good evidence versus oh I knew they just would have hung up on me like that's not convincing yes or if you get an email back that says this is none of your business that's an admission like you want that you want that response so um I hope this is helpful and good luck I can tell you my heart goes out to you because the one time there was my kids had a nanny at their dad's house it was hitting them and we've never allowed that like that's just not okay and um but all my kids were telling me the same story this lady like she washed out my kids mouth with soap and I was I went to my we were in the middle of divorce I went to my ex I was like what in the world and he's he kind of blew me off and I lost it so I feel you I feel you but but I also there is a lot we can do to influence our children's environment and we have kind of a responsibility to influence our child's environment whether they're at school or the other parent's house if we think there might be something wrong we don't lose that obligation just because we don't live with our children full-time yeah and one final point on that issue is seeking to get the child into counseling because the counselor is a mandatory reporter obviously if the kid is suffering physical abuse like that's trauma the kids should get some counseling for that but then sometimes that can be the best outcome because if it's you coming in and making the accusation then it's this whole He Said She Said and that you know we have this history of disputes but if it's a mandatory reporter counselor coming in and saying oh my gosh I have serious concerns of abuse here by mom's boyfriend again it's just a stronger position where action is likely to be taken faster right or changed Behavior you know if someone changed behavior and that's a win right that's a win anything you can do to make your child's environment better is a win and sometimes people get so caught up on proving what happened they're failing to protect their child when they could mm-hmm um all right we have five minutes left so many questions we won't be able to get to all of them um and I thank you all for being here and for your participation um oh this is a great question can you submit evidence that's been previously submitted as an example I submitted it in the divorce but now can I submit the same evidence for a modification of parenting time it's police reports Etc you can if it's relevant to the issues in the modification however if this evidence was previously admitted into evidence so this was let's say you had an exhibit with five police reports with a summary page on top and you that was your exhibit five and you got it admitted then technically it's already part of the court record and you can reference it you know ask the court to you know oh exhibit five I want the court to remember that and take notice but if you have a lot of exhibits in your case sometimes that can be tough and so sometimes it's easier to just resubmit it and do it again but do you have to resubmit it no you could reference the documents that had already been admitted um but again sometimes it's just easier to resubmit it so it's right there and it's handy instead of having to go through the exhibit archives or something yes I agree with you and sometimes judges will not allow um if you're going for a modification sometimes judges will say what's the change circumstances since don't tell me what I've already heard that I already made decisions about I'm not telling you that this won't get in especially if it's police reports that we're talking about let's say there's new allegations of child abuse your old stuff's probably going to get in as well to give credibility to the new stuff but um you know if if if you're just looking for a do-over you're you're doing them so let's say previously during the divorce you got 50 50 and you submitted these police reports and the judge still gave you 50 50 and now you want to do a modification and the only thing you have is the is the old place reports that you already submitted that is a harder case and it's possible that that wouldn't get in or it's possible that the case would be dismissed because of a lack of change in circumstance lots of nuance yeah definitely um let's see military pensions how do I go about getting it I was awarded it but how do I get it and this is this is the case not just for military pensions but like you'll have a divorce decree that says go divide the requirement the retirement accounts via Quadro and then you know 10 years later it's not done what can they do talk to an attorney with experience with military benefits it is complicated there's a lot involved that's great if you got the award possibly depending on what language was in the award but yeah I would I would if if you don't have the money right away I would start setting some money aside for a consultation and I would be looking for a Quadro attorney a qualified Domestic Relations order attorney with military benefits experience absolutely and there are there are you know the nice thing about cuadros and Military divorce and things like that is this is federal law it's not Arizona specific you don't have to find a lawyer in your state and there are places that do large volumes of quadros and they're expert in it so it's all they do so you have some options there for sure we are just out of time registration for win without law school goes live on the 19th is that right yep sounds good yeah so on the 19th you will be able to register for win without law school that is um live courses with Julie and small groups you're going to be able to get information and you're going to be able to practice you're going to be able to talk about your case present your evidence it's going to be just awesome do you want to tell people the there are different um tracks for different courses Julie do you want to explain that right we've tried to cover each type of family law case that could come up so on Mondays we're going to focus on divorce so whether you have a divorce with or without children we're going to go from start to finish from creating your case strategy to initiating your case to navigating the system to bring your case to a conclusion be it through an agreement or through a contested trial um so that'll be Mondays and then Tuesdays we're going to talk about child custody establishments so this is if you have one or more children together you've never been married and you don't have any court papers in place but you're wanting to get court papers for a schedule or for child support or for decision making or you know all of those things so we'll talk about that on Tuesdays how to create a case strategy how to initiate your case or respond if if you're the responding party and then how to navigate your case to a conclusion through an agreement or through a contested trial um Wednesdays we'll get into what we call post-decree issues so this is if you've you've already gotten divorced or you've already established child custody but you need to change the terms of your parenting plan or change child support or change decision making or change spousal maintenance that would be a modification um and we'll also talk about enforcing terms of your divorce decree or your custody order so Wednesdays is post-decree modifications and enforcements and then Thursdays will be practicing trial skills so if you're going to be going to a hearing on a temporary order or on a full trial we're going to go through you know how do you do an opening statement how do you do direct examination how do you get the exhibits admitted you know practice some of that stuff that Billy and I went through today so it'll be Monday through Thursday for 10 week weeks everything will be recorded So if the time slots that were live don't work for you you'll be able to access the recordings and we'll have q a in conjunction with that so um it's it's a really comprehensive educational program to teach you all the things that you're not going to get by just filling out the court forms um the court forms are super helpful and we're going to talk about those forums but the forms alone are very confusing so this is like a guide to how to use those forms effectively and when to use them and how to fill them out and all of that stuff it's gonna be great and I saw I saw at least two people on on my Tick Tock feed who said that they showed up in court and told their story and thought that that would be enough and it was a big disaster and I'm sorry that that happened to you but hopefully we can prevent it from happening next time thank you Brianna thank you Julie we'll talk to everybody soon bye bye

Channel: Modern Law Divorce and Family Law Attorneys

Views: 6,864

Keywords: Divorce process, Divorce law, Family in law, The divorce, Divorce help, Family law divorce, A divorce, Representing yourself in divorce court, Representing yourself in a divorce, representing myself in divorce court, self representation in divorce court, represent myself in divorce, representing yourself in a divorce case, Arizona Divorce Law, Arizona Divorce Court

Id: HABkQewa7Ic

Length: 61min 44sec (3704 seconds)

Published: Sun Dec 11 2022