As you may know, I talk to quite a few people about family court and often end up having folks talk to me about their cases. Sometimes, if a case interests me enough, with the permission of the person involved, I might end up looking at the court file for a particular case. Which leads me to this particularly important point: Make sure that you have an exact copy of everything that is in your file.
What do I mean by the court file? According to the 2011 Practice Book 7-1 the clerks are required to keep a record of all pending cases, including applications and petitions made to the court, together with a record of each paper filed and order made or judgment rendered therein, with the date of such filing, making or rendition. The record of your pending case is what is known as your court file. What is in this court file is sometimes referred to as what is in the record or on the record.
The court file includes whatever documents your attorney sends to the court and/or whatever documents your attorney receives from the opposing attorney which was sent to court. It also includes court orders.
You should have your own personal copy of all these documents. Also, always get copies of the court orders that the clerks put in your file, because if you don't see the exact wording of the order, you may not entirely understand it, and if you don't fully understand it, you may not require that your X obey it, or you might just inadvertently disobey it yourself.
Also, sometimes orders can be worded in ways that you might interpret differently than your own attorney or the opposing attorney interprets it, or the judge could provide explanations in writing on the order which provide insight into the judge's intentions. If you understand the order differently than other parties to the case, or you have trouble understanding it at all, you need an exact copy of the order so that you can obtain further clarification either from your lawyer or the court. Without an exact copy of what is in your file, you cannot expect to be on top of what is going on in your case.
This leads me to my next point, which is, most divorce cases in Connecticut, particularly high conflict divorces, take at least a year or more to resolve. Since this is true, always make sure that you go personally to the courthouse every couple of months and review the documents that have been placed in your file.
There are two reasons for doing this. One, I know this is against the rules, but every once in a while the opposing attorney could be tempted to slip something into the file without giving you a copy of it. Two, every once in while your own attorney could be too lazy or avoidant to send you a copy of documents he or she receives and/or sends. Unless you personally review your court file, you are not going to find out about it.
Plus, every once in a while a judge or a clerk might just scribble a few words on a document or court order that will provide some explanation of the thinking in your case that is going on in court. Another consideration you should keep in mind is that sometimes clerks will simply fail to include a document that you have submitted to court. This may just happen with self represented parties like me, but even so, you want to be sure that all documents relevant to your case which you submitted in good faith and believed were in the record are, indeed, in the record.
A good way to make sure that everything that should be there, is there, is to print out the case detail from the judicial website: http://www.jud2.ct.gov/. The case detail is the listing of all documents that have been submitted to the court in your case along with the individual number provided for each document. Match all the documents listed on the case detail with the documents you have in your file. This is helpful because whenever you refer to these documents in any motions you submit to the court later on, you can use those numbers as an additional means to identify them. Also, if you have more documents in your possession that you have submitted to court than you have numbers, you can be alerted immediately to any problems with clerks not listing your motions in the file.
Finally, it is important to think about what kind of impression does this file, your file, convey regarding the kind of person that you are? Remember, sometimes the first impression a judge will get of your case will arise solely from the opportunity he or she has to review your file. And first impressions are often indelible.
Are there any unanswered accusations that should be responded to? Make note of that as something that should be addressed at a later time. Has your attorney stated that he or she filed certain documents, but you can't find them in the court file. Again, this is something to make note of and bring up with your attorney. Is there anything in the file that could compromise you in any way if seen out of context? Make note of that as well and plan on providing the appropriate context.
They say that the devil is in the details. Make sure he isn't in YOUR case detail!
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