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Traditional Litigation
Process Options: How to Resolve your Family Law Dispute?
Traditional Litigation
Resolved Through Settlement
Before or after a case is filed with the court, attorneys and parties work toward settlement. This may include meetings with both attorneys and both clients together, as well as exchanging written settlement offers.
Prior to meeting or exchanging offers, financial documents may need to be exchanged. This can occur formally pursuant to a court order or informally as agreed upon by the parties or attorneys. Many counties have adopted local rules requiring parties to a family law case to exchange certain financial documents, referred to as a Mandatory Document Exchange. Here is a link to the required list for St. Louis County Circuit Court.
In an effort to resolve your case, you or your attorney may speak to the judge at a court conference, also referred to as settlement conference, status conference, or pretrial conference. At a court conference, attorneys or unrepresented parties will have the opportunity to talk to the judge about the issues in hopes that the judge will be able to provide insight or help in resolving contested matters. Some judges meet with attorneys in their office (chambers), while others may talk to the attorneys from the bench in the courtroom.
In the event that parties cannot agree informally to exchange documents or additional documents outside of the Mandatory Document Exchange are necessary, each party may subpoena records in order to get more information or take someone’s deposition. These formal discovery tools are discussed further below.
At times, parties must involve the court and take steps toward trial in order to reach an agreement. Until the Judge has entered its judgment, settlement is always an option.. This means that even after the trial is finished, and the parties are waiting for a judgment from the court, which can take months or even a year, settlement is still a possibility.
Traditional Litigation
Resolved Through Trial
Attorneys at The Center for Family Law believe litigation should rarely be the first option. However, when reasonable attempts to resolve a case fail, the attorneys are prepared to implement an aggressive litigation strategy. Even though very few cases are actually tried, we prepare for that possibility even while working toward settlement. Only about 3-5% of all cases end in trial i.e. where the parties present evidence in court and ask the Judge to make decisions on division of property, maintenance (alimony/spousal support), child custody, and child support.
Litigation may be the only way a party can be assured of a relatively good outcome, if the other party refuses to negotiate in good faith, or has shown himself or herself to be untrustworthy in financial disclosure or other matters during the marriage. Below is an overview of the steps necessary to prepare for trial, have a trial, and what happens after trial.
Trial Preparations
Records Requests.
Also referred to as a Subpoena Duces Tecum, this tool can be used to request bank records, employment records, or school records from the source that can be submitted as evidence at trial without someone from the bank, for example, needing to testify at trial as to the authenticity of the documents.
Experts.
The opinion of an expert can be extremely helpful at trial or in settling your case. Experts include psychologists testifying about mental health, substance abuse, and other parenting-related issues, a financial expert to explain the tax implications of dividing complex assets or the value of a business, or an appraiser to speak to the value of real property that needs to be divided. You and your attorney should talk early on in your case about how an expert may help resolve your case through settlement or at trial.
Depositions.
The deposition is an opportunity to confront the other side with records and find out what his or her strategy is for trial. Depositions are sworn testimony and a court reporter provides us with a transcript. The other side’s deposition testimony will allow us to prepare for trial and can be used at trial to show the judge if her story changes from the time of deposition to trial. You and your attorney will need to decide as part of your trial strategy who to depose. Typically, you will depose the other side, the other side’s named experts, and other important fact witnesses like a teacher or neighbor. If you are being deposed, you and your attorney will likely spend time preparing.
Exhibits.
Updated Statement of Income and Expenses, Statement of Property, and Proposed Parenting Plan, assuming there are revisions. In certain counties, each party must also file a Proposed Division of Property and Debt.
Trial
Trials are typically scheduled for a specific number of days and given a numbered setting which reflects the order of priority in which the case will be heard on the trial date. Even when a trial is scheduled for two days and is the number one setting, there are sometimes conflicts that prevent the case from getting finished during that time. For example, the judge starts late and the trial does not finish within the allotted time so the judge continues the trial into the next day or for a day in the future.
During trial, each attorney is allotted half the time in which to present his or her side of the case as well as to rebut the other side’s case. This includes cross-examination of witnesses. The initiating party, the Petitioner, goes first at trial. You and your attorney will decide who the witnesses will be at trial and each witness will most likely be cross-examined by the attorney on the other side. The Guardian ad Litem and the judge may ask questions of the witnesses as well.
Some judges keep track of time and adhere to a very strict schedule. Others are much looser. Time tracking includes any time the attorney uses whether objecting to a question by the other attorney or asking questions. The time includes time used in the client’s “main” case as well as cross-examination in the other party’s case.
After Trial
At the end of trial, the judge takes the case under submission. You are not divorced until the judge issues a judgment, setting out all the terms of property, custody, and support.
Typically, the attorneys are required to submit proposed judgments. The proposed judgment summarizes the evidence submitted to the court at trial and includes your proposed outcome. The proposed judgment can take considerable time to draft and revise, and we often are required to work quickly in order to meet the deadline established by the judge. After the proposed judgments are submitted, we wait for the judge to make a decision. After the judgment is received, both sides have the opportunity to file post-trial motions to correct clerical errors, oversight errors, etc. Post-trial motions must be filed within 30 days of the entry of the judgment.
Sometimes it can take several months between the filing of post-trial motions and the judge’s ruling on them. Once the period for all the post-trial motions is over, the judgment is considered final, either as first entered or as modified by the Court. Both parties then have the opportunity to file an appeal.
Related Posts from the Newsroom
Both parties in a family law dispute have the right to engage in discovery which may include depositions. A deposition is a witness’s sworn out-of-court testimony used to gather information as part of the “discovery process,” which occurs when a case is contested and headed toward trial.
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We work with divorce clients in St. Louis City, St. Louis County, St. Charles County, Jefferson County, Lincoln County, and Warren County.