I recently found myself back at trial court, and what a bummer! The anticipation began two weeks in advance when I looked at my calendar and was like, Oh My God! My mood immediately plummeted and I was so, so depressed.
Even if I was the one who submitted the motions and got the ball rolling, I still hate to go to trial court.
My process before going to trial court is quite intensive. I usually take each of the motions that is going to be heard and I review them carefully, checking to see what evidence I will need in order to prove the facts that I have stated. Then I get a large three ring binder with dividers and begin to collect that evidence and place it in the binder.
Not only do I collect evidence, if there is any court document that I need to provide any kind of context, I will include that document. Then I organize the documents by placing them in exactly the same order that I will be referring to them in my argument.
Usually, I will place any of the important documents in my case that are referred to regularly right at the beginning of the notebook, even if there is only a distant chance that they will be needed. Such documents would include the parenting agreement, the financial agreement, the prenuptial agreement, the custody evaluation, the psychological evaluations, etc.
After that I ordinarily undertake a search at one of the law libraries for all relevant statutes, practice book references, and case law that will address the issues I have raised in my motions or by the motions on the other side.
It is usually from this last exercise that I end up reporting results in my lovely blogs.
After that, I usually have a bunch of miscellaneous questions that have to be answered by an investigation into my voluminous court file.
To be honest, if I am lucky, the law will be clear on what I need to do or say, but sometimes it takes me months before I understand the meaning of what I've read. There are legal points in my case that have taken me years to understand!
Once I have prepared everything in terms of the evidence and the legal basis for my motions, I then write up an argument by hand in my own handwriting, replete with underlining and daubed with various colored markers. The argument is usually my final step.
One of the real problems with this approach (even though it is essential to my process and thus unavoidable) is that it takes a lot of time and involves considerable shuffling and organizing papers, writing and revision of my presentation to the trial court. It never fails to happen that I miscalculate how much time I need and I end up staying up all night the day before trial, so I come to court tired and crabby and then have to deal with the nonsense of the court personnel and end up wanting to bite off people's heads.
And don't forget the buildup before trial court. I would be interested to know if any of you get the buildup? This includes my X staging confrontations that are unnecessary, putting the children deliberately at risk to upset me, failing to show up on time to pick up or drop off the children for visitation, so called "forgetting" to pay one of his financial obligations, or just sending me a bunch of nasty, accusatory emails.
Another particularly annoying tactic is the opposing attorney will call the trial court and ask to have the hearing on the motions delayed or rescheduled for trumped up reasons, or even make it so impossible you end up not being able to have the motions heard at all. My file is full of motions that never made it before a judge.
Of course, the end result of the buildup is you are shrieking with irritation by the time the court date arrives. On top of that, you get the general rude and disagreeable behavior of trial court personnel. You go to the clerk to find out which courtroom you are in and he insists that you step aside so he can help ten other people while the clock ticks closer to the time you are supposed to have the hearing.
Somehow you end up in family relations and these people are particularly hard faced and ugly minded. Even though your X and his attorney are the source of the trouble by violating the law and lying bold faced, family relations will support your X and speak to you as though you are not only intellectually challenged but at fault for everything. By the time you are done with them, usually you have a state marshall hovering around the entrance to the room.
What gets me is the presumption they seem to operate with the YOU are bad when, in fact, it is the X and the attorney who are blatantly disregarding the law or any semblance of decency. The disrespect and disregard does get to you. So, of course, your blood pressure boils some more and you start having to work hard so you can maintain control of your emotions. Because while doing everything possible to be incendiary, the Court will immediately refuse to work with you if you don't present yourself as cool, calm, reasoned and prepared.
How do you get through it? Well, a little benedryl doesn't hurt, but lots of deep breathing is helpful as well. I have also learned to take my time during arguments before the court. I speak slowly and deliberately and if I have to find a document, I will say, "Just a moment, please" and take my time to locate what I need.
As a rule of thumb, I would say that despite all law and all reason, I mostly lose, even when I should not. Recently, I went to a hearing and, in a Motion to Sanction, proved irrefutably that the opposing attorney told outright lies in a pleading she submitted to the trial court. The trial court denied my Motion to Sanction, nonetheless, stating that nothing the opposing attorney had said rose to the level of the Motion to Sanction.
How much does a lie have to be a lie before you have violated your attorney's oath not to lie under any circumstances? When is enough enough? I'd love to hear it!
But that is the thing--you bring in what you think is enough evidence, and the trial court will say, we don't have enough. Of course, you have more evidence at home. I have multiple examples of the opposing attorney lying, but the opportunity for that motion is gone and I would have to file another motion in order to provide that additional evidence. Whatever it is, judges always have an excuse not to do what the law says you ought to do.
So, inevitably, a day in trial court is traumatic because you end up having done all that preparatory work and have nothing to show for it and you have been beaten over the head by the X, the opposing attorney, court personnel, etc., etc. and have nothing to show for it.
Of course, every once in a while you may get an encouraging ruling, but that seems engineered as well, either for the purposes of continuing the litigation so everyone makes money, or to raise hopes, just to dash them again a few months later with a decisive denial. The Trial Court, as well as other branches of the court, have multiple ways to deflect, defer, and delay the proper resolution of the cases that are put before them.
If there is one phrase that I repeat to myself the most often it is, "Justice delayed is justice denied." For example, with the Joe Watley case, there have been so many rulings, maneuverings, reconsiderations, appeals, and reappeals that almost a decade has gone by while the parents have been denied their parental rights. I have no doubt that in many cases where this happens, it is done intentionally.
Trial court is no longer the scary place it once was. I know when I go there that whatever happens I will survive and I will maintain my self respect. It is interesting to see how many of the attorneys working with clients both inside the courtrooms and in the corridors are my former attorneys, or else they are attorneys I have consulted for second opinions along the way. So there are so many familiar faces.
The ones that have been the most evil unfailingly come up to me and wish to shake my hand and/or engulf me in a warm embrace. Since I am unable to just say "fuck you" which is my most natural gut response, having been brought up to be considerably polite, I usually oblige while making suitably cutting remarks with a smile on my face. In the days when mental health professionals were chasing me around trying to deny me custody of my children, they would call that kind of behavior on my part "denied aggression." I am not sure how they would define what the attorneys are doing.
On the way home, my advocate and I have a debriefing session where we go over my presentation and review what was said. Even though it probably isn't the greatest time, I talk about the mistakes I made, any incongruities in the trial courts ruling, and then just to relieve the pressure I make fun of everyone I dealt with and laugh like hell.
When I get home, I usually take all the court documents I took with me and throw them in the corner and ignore them for several days until I'm emotionally capable of managing what happened. I normally order transcripts of the hearing, and then all of it gets put into place as a resource to consult with for my next court appearance. It's exhausting and stressful and probably not worth the trouble, but still I am not defeated because, as T.S. Eliot once said, "I keep on trying."
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