[Solved] Contested hearing and statements/cross examining

I've just bumped up a post about contested hearing/statements/cross examination here in the legal eagle section.

If you check out the sticky at the top of this section published by the bar council for representing yourself in court they have some useful info about cross examination.

Regarding Evidence.....Any meassges you have from your ex showing abusive/harassing in nature get them printed out....i used screen shots of emails, image caputre from the mobile showing time/dates etc... i needed them to help me prove my ex was a liar and although there ended up being around 32pages of text and email evidence i pointed out each to the judge that showed the was lying to the courts from her statement of events she'd been claiming.
i had way too many from her that all showed her to be un-reasonable and un-reliable in her statements.

with regards to your statement to court....you need to keep it focussed on what you are wanting the court to do....i.e. increase your time with your child/children....try not to get in to the "she said this and i said that" side of things too much but make sure you point out what she is doing to prevent / restrict your time with your child/children.

also when writing it up make sure you always refer to your child/children as "our child/children" my ex used to wind me up in her statements by saying "my child" as in our child was hers and not ours! i made a point of this with the judge that my child was a part of me too not just hers as she always refers!

keep to the facts and truth....back up anything you claim with evidence.

when making claims in you statement refer to the evidence to prove it.....e.g. on this day she sent me a rather abusive and nast text - (see text B12) my response was this is not good for our child (see text B13) etc...etc...

whatever your ex claims when she eventually submits her statement go through it well.....make notes against each point she makes....refer to your evidence to give you points to argue and prove yourself.

its very difficult but the more preparation you do the more confident you will be in yourself to argue your side of the case in front of the judge and against her/her legal rep.

Yoji has writen some excellent guides on this in the "stickys" at the top here. and there are qutie a few of us who've been through it and still going through it who can offer our experienced based advice.

best advice i can give is stick to the truth and don't get dragged too much in to the "he said she said" cos the judge will see it as just that.....hard evidence and the truth will get you through it.

I see you posted on the final contested hearing topic Dad-I-d....Yoji gives some good advice in this topic so I've bumped it up to the top of this section again......over two years ago this topic was started, what a stalwart you are Dad-I-d!

Many thanks for the original posting Nannyjane, there is a lot of very useful info contained particularly from Dad-I-d too. It is my understanding that the court have given us until 4 days before the contested hearing date to basically exchange statements. What I want to do is be able to counter a lot of what her statement will contain as I know it will be mostly false and malicious, trouble is that 4 days is not a long time in which to organise, prepare and create my statement so not sure how to approach this?

That's the trouble isn't it, both of you are going to be waiting for each other to exchange first! I think the best you can do is to prepare your statement and try and anticipate what she is going to write. What kind of things did she say at the last hearing? Don't forget it's not all about countering her arguements, it's also important that you are seen to be rising above the [censored] for tat and putting your children first, so it would be a good idea to concentrate on that too.

Presumably alot of it you will know already and it is often the woman who throws everything at once then runs out of amo, unless they are prepared to keep lying and make more false allegations.

My experience is that if it is too long the judge will not bother. If it is short and factual they may read some of it.

I havent got as far as you in terms of hearings. I think your focus should be on the facts....but perhaps append all the evidence to your statement.

Good luck Tel!

Its a good point regarding the length of the statement and corroborating evidence. Since the last hearing I have a better understanding of my ex's reason for cutting my contact as this is the first time she has mentioned it! As she has another older son with a different ex she is trying to suggest that my sons time with his half-brother is more important than with me! This is what I need to effectively counter in court and would appreciate best advice on how to approach this.

Cheers
Tel

If you are going to use text messages, you have to have the original messages on your phone to back this up.

I believe you have to be seen to be doing.

I recall the level of communication is not great. But if you have

Sent letters asking her what she proposes in terms of a fixed regular schedule
Offered mediation again - though I appreciate it may be too late.
Or reoffer the above to build a case

If you can highlight how reasonable she is despite your best efforts to solve things amicably then it should go a long way.

You have demonstrated you are willing to work around her and his half sibbling but ultimately it is important your child has regular good quality contact with his father.

BW

Hi tel.....Do they attend the same school?

What is the age difference?

I think you mentioned previously that the cutting back of the contact and overnights coincided with her application to the CSA? If that's the case then you could highlight this and the fact that, if she was happy for longer contact before why didn't she feel then that it interfered with sibling contact. This could be an area of questioning during cross examination.

I think when you are referring to contact then the tone should be that whilst you respect that siblings need quality time together parental contact is of equal importance, as is contact between your son and his extended family on your side. Again if the father of her older child didn't have any contact with him how would the application of her rules work then, would she deny her younger son contact with his father because of this?

As the children live under the same roof, they share meals, playtime...they wake up together and possibly go to school together. Day to day they have continued contact, the older child might benefit from having some one to one time with his mother and the same applies for your son too...

Hi, they do go to different schools and there is a 3 year difference in ages. The cutting of previous contact did indeed coincide with her application for CSA payments, I was reluctant to raise this in court as would come across as pure conjecture on my part with no substantive evidence to back it up. Is anyone aware of any case law that could be quoted regarding the father/sibling issue? I fully understand that my son needs time with his half-brother but I just don't feel that it should impact directly on the meaningful quantity of contact he has with me. Nannyjane raises an interesting point, and what if my ex had 3 different children with 3 different fathers (definitely not unrealistic), where would you draw the line?

I think you definitely can raise the issue of the CSA and the stopping of overnight stays. You should have correspondence from the CSA to show when she initiated their involvement, and that it was at the same time that overnight contact was stopped. I would make mention of this and as I said in my previous post this might be a good area to explore during cross examination. If you asked her .....

Is it just a coincidence that you stopped overnight stays just after you put a claim in with the CSA?
Is it not the case that The CSA makes reductions to the maintenance payments when a child stays overnight with the NRP?
Can you confirm that overnight visits were a part of our contact agreement?

Play about with your questions and then when you are happy put them onto numbered flash cards

As there is a 3 year gap will she not allow her older child to go away on school trips because it would interfere with their time together...of course she wouldn't because they are individuals and as they grow up they will do many things independently of one another.

...'As there is a 3 year gap will she not allow her older child to go away on school trips because it would interfere with their time together...of course she wouldn't because they are individuals and as they go up they will do many things independently of one another. '

Nannyjane, I have read a lot of your posts and you have an absolute talent for producing unbelievably good advice...the above quote being a fine example and this is certainly a point I will raise in court. I am still a little sceptical about using the CSA / stopping of overnight contact card albeit as a line or two within the statement but not as a cross-examination question. I really want to keep the cross-examining aspect to specific points where I can offer evidence in terms of emails or text messages, but still not certain what direction to go in? Do you know roughly how many questions I am able to ask, or what sort of time period the average court will devote to cross-examining?

Thanks
Tel.

If you google cross examination in court you will find information and advice about this....did you look at the sticky from the Bar Council on how to self represent at the top of this section, you'll find some useful tips there. I don't think there is a set amount of time that you will have, and there should be a flow...I think if you start chronologically that might help.

If it were me I would squeeze a couple of questions about the link between her CSA claim and the withdrawal of payments, don't you have any correspondence from them? You could write and ask them for a letter clarifying the date the claim was initiated.

You could squeeze it into a statement somewhere and let the judge pick up on it himself if he wants more information, but he'll certainly hear it.

Long time ago, there was a film with a courtroom scene:
Lawyer for the defence, addressing the jury: "I want you NOT to think about a pink elephant...... now what are you all thinking about?..."