Preparing for Court with TalkingParents
4 ways you can leverage TalkingParents to prepare for court.
- 5 min read
- custody
- family law
Going to family court for any reason, whether it's a child support adjustment or parenting plan modification, can be physically and mentally demanding. Depending on who initiates a return to court after a divorce or custody agreement case, co-parents often feel strain in preparing for and attending a hearing. From filing a motion to presenting evidence, a co-parent's involvement in the family law process frequently requires significant time, money, and effort.
In addition to providing a secure, cost-effective communication service that streamlines co-parenting, TalkingParents is a platform that can help simplify your court preparations. Many of our features offer multiple benefits that support your everyday shared parenting efforts and help you stay organized in and out of the courtroom. Learn how our service can boost the efficiency of your court preparations.
How can TalkingParents help me prepare for court?
1. Leverage your Unalterable Records
Regardless of the central matter in a case, gathering and preparing court-admissible evidence is the most significant element in making a compelling argument for yourself and your children. However, it's often the most complicated part of preparing for and appearing in court. Bringing evidence to family court involves compiling relevant information, from text messages about missed parenting time to records of missed payments, that supports your opinion and is appropriately presented.
Preparing evidence for your next hearing can take many hours or days between reviewing every conversation and highlighting the applicable pieces. Preparing alone can be a hassle and is doable, but working with a family law attorney is the better option overall. Despite these benefits, the cost of working with an attorney adds significant financial pressure to an already expensive process.
With TalkingParents, preparing court evidence is more straightforward and cost-effective because everything you and your co-parent do within the service is automatically documented on an Unalterable Record. In leveraging your Records, you empower yourself and your lawyer with a compilation of potential evidence that can be reviewed and presented easily. Instead of examining information from dozens of sources, your Record offers a single source to reference that can save you hours of time and thousands in attorney's fees when preparing evidence.
Important details to notate within TalkingParents to use as potential evidence in court might include:
- Messages that address missed or late custody swaps
- Call transcripts that include examples of harassment
- Conversations that show an extensive lack of responses
- Instances of your ex using enmeshment or parentification
- Missed or rejected payment requests for shared expenses
- Notes about abuse or other issues mentioned by your kids
- Any violation of a court order whether it occurs within or outside the app
2. Track court dates and deadlines
You can do everything to prepare for your upcoming court hearings, but your efforts will only amount to real change if you follow the court's schedule and rules. Between filing motions and ensuring supplementary paperwork is submitted in time, there are dozens of moving pieces to track. A missed deadline or court date gets no sympathy from a judge. It often creates a cascading effect that can impact the duration and intensity of an already lengthy, complicated process.
While most co-parents use the Shared Calendar to track custody schedules and other appointments for their kids, they can always include court-related events to stay on top of deadlines and other dates. You and your co-parent can add hearing dates and other paperwork timelines if you have an amicable dynamic and approach the case together. By including both schedules in the same calendar, you can maintain control of critical dates for yourself and your children without significant compromises.
On the other hand, co-parents who have high conflict dynamics with their exes can use a different feature to track their court schedule more privately and just as effectively. Even though it's presented as a private space to express your thoughts and emotions, the Personal Journal is an excellent tool for tracking your court dates and deadlines. You can create an entry that details when you need to file paperwork or attend a hearing, supplement it with other information about your situation, and share it with your lawyer if needed—all without your co-parent having the ability to see or edit what you write.
3. Store copies of important documents
Unless you're going to court for the first time, you have court-ordered documents from previous cases related to your divorce or parenting plan. In either case, having any legal documents relevant to your parenting situation ready to review with a lawyer or submit to the courts is vital. If you've previously filed a protective order against your co-parent or know they have a felony that affected their custody rights, any documentation that pertains to your upcoming hearing can be helpful to have on hand.
Outside of documents related to your case, other files that pertain to your children or yourself can also serve as relevant evidence. To give better context to your situation in a child support case, you should have copies of any financial documents. For your children, anything from their medical records to their school report cards can be helpful if you're requesting a different custody schedule.
No matter what documents you want to store securely, the Vault File Storage feature within TalkingParents offers a space that simplifies storing and sharing files safely. Anything in your Vault is kept entirely private from your co-parent, so you're free from worrying that they can see or manipulate any files you want to keep. Any document in your Vault can be securely shared by emailing it to a recipient, and you even have the option to limit how long someone can access the file.
4. Review helpful parenting resources
Whether you're going to court for the first or fifth time, dealing with any part of the family law process can be emotionally and mentally taxing. Reviewing potential evidence, preparing to represent yourself, or collaborating with a lawyer demands significant time and attention. Combine these responsibilities with your everyday life and co-parenting, and you're stretched thin from all angles.
While many co-parents understand how these efforts affect them, they sometimes don't realize how it can impact their kids. Even if you do everything you can to shield your children from your co-parenting situation being in court, they will inevitably feel some form of effects. Between doing what you can to protect your mental health and manage your court case, you may need extra guidance to ensure you're there for your kids when and how they need you to be.
In addition to our co-parenting communication service, TalkingParents has an extensive collection of parenting resources curated to uplift and educate parents in all shared parenting situations. Our articles cover various topics, from supporting your child's development to understanding family law matters, encompassing many aspects of the co-parenting experience. We also have pieces written by guest authors and webinars hosted by lawyers, counselors, psychologists, divorce coaches, and other professionals who share their expert insight on important co-parenting topics.
Taking the steps needed to prepare for court is no easy feat, but it can be achieved with the right support system and tools. TalkingParents strives to provide a service that makes everyday co-parenting, court preparations, and anything in between more secure and accessible. Our service works for all kinds of shared parenting situations, from amicable to hostile, by offering a tool that's a game-changer in court and promotes accountable, efficient communication. Learn how TalkingParents can help you like it's helped real co-parents worldwide.