Don't screw with the court
Jul. 27th, 2009 10:07 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
muck_a_luckOne thing I have learned in this job. Don't try to jerk a court around. Because you will lose.
Though sometimes, I wonder about judges. This one case recently came through. The woman got a temporary modification of her support when she notified the court she had lost her job. (She is the one paying support.) The hearing came up for the three month review. She was still unemployed. She notified the court she had a job interview that conflicted with her court date. When she didn't attend the court date, the judge unmodified her support retroactively. When she reapplied for getting her support reduced, the judge denied her petition because her situation had not changed since the order.
Basically, the judge acknowledged her continuing unemployment by saying the unemployment had already been dealt with in the prior order.
But the prior order required her to pay support as if she were employed, despite her continuing unemployment.
Now, there are several things that could have happened to make this less irrational than it seems. My guess is, she didn't correctly request a continuance of her hearing. Maybe she called the clerk or something, without doing a motion to continue. So the day she didn't show up, she may have just been AWOL, which will cause a judge to rule against you.
Also, with continuing uneployment, it is possible that she will soon have other grounds for requesting reduction in support. Foreclosure or loss of lease, for instance.
But my point is, even when you are asking for something logical and are an "innocent" party, it is important to pay very close attention to your litigation and to acknowledge that if the litigation is important to you, you may have to make it THE top priority in your life. That may mean passing on a job interview or asking to reschedule it. Doing the also apparently logically correct thing and going to that job interview to try to end your continuing unemployment could be very counterproductive.
My PSA for the day.
Though sometimes, I wonder about judges. This one case recently came through. The woman got a temporary modification of her support when she notified the court she had lost her job. (She is the one paying support.) The hearing came up for the three month review. She was still unemployed. She notified the court she had a job interview that conflicted with her court date. When she didn't attend the court date, the judge unmodified her support retroactively. When she reapplied for getting her support reduced, the judge denied her petition because her situation had not changed since the order.
Basically, the judge acknowledged her continuing unemployment by saying the unemployment had already been dealt with in the prior order.
But the prior order required her to pay support as if she were employed, despite her continuing unemployment.
Now, there are several things that could have happened to make this less irrational than it seems. My guess is, she didn't correctly request a continuance of her hearing. Maybe she called the clerk or something, without doing a motion to continue. So the day she didn't show up, she may have just been AWOL, which will cause a judge to rule against you.
Also, with continuing uneployment, it is possible that she will soon have other grounds for requesting reduction in support. Foreclosure or loss of lease, for instance.
But my point is, even when you are asking for something logical and are an "innocent" party, it is important to pay very close attention to your litigation and to acknowledge that if the litigation is important to you, you may have to make it THE top priority in your life. That may mean passing on a job interview or asking to reschedule it. Doing the also apparently logically correct thing and going to that job interview to try to end your continuing unemployment could be very counterproductive.
My PSA for the day.
no subject
Date: 2009-07-27 04:50 pm (UTC)