Preparation for Court

[Lyrael924]

Dear Soc-

My case is the case of the 8-year-old boy, living in Oregon with mom, who has sole legal and physical custody. I am trying for visitation with him. I live in Illinois and have no visitation rights currently. We have a child support order in place from Hawaii.

We have a court date in September, and I just found out that the sheriff's office has successfully served the mom with the papers. Everything seems to be going well at this point. However, I have not heard from the mom, and usually she is very upset by getting papers of any sort. I am a little concerned that she may be hiring a lawyer, not that there is anything I can do about it if she did.

My questions are:
1) What is the best way to prepare for court?
2) If she tries to say that I've threatened to take our son away from her, what is the best response? (This is untrue, by the way)
3) If she tries to move into discussing relationship issues from the past (not related to domestic violence or anything like that -she tends to want to discuss her resentment over the way our relationship ended), do I need to respond to those, or focus my replies on the fact that we are in court to discuss our son's best interests?
4) Is there an overall demeanor in court that will be helpful to my situation? For example, professional, non-emotional, etc?

Thank you for your time, as always. :)

[socrateaser]

>My questions are:
>1) What is the best way to prepare for court?

The best way is to hire a lawyer to represent your interests. Seriously, your quesiton is too open ended. I'd have to teach trial practice 101 in order to answer the question. You are the petitioner, so it's up to you to make your case that you should be awarded reasonable visitation with the child. Gather your evidence, and then go in and present it to the court.

The court will almost certainly order mediation followed by a custody evaluation, so you may want to offer the other party an opportunity to obtain a mediator to help you now, even before the hearing date. Maybe you could settle it with a mediator over the telephone and you won't need to appear.

>2) If she tries to say that I've threatened to take our son
>away from her, what is the best response? (This is untrue, by
>the way)

If it's just her word against yours, then you simply state that she is overreacting and that you merely want a reasonable opportunity to establish and maintain a parent-child relationship. If there is objective evidence that you have threatened her in some way, then that could be trouble for you, because the judge could use it to deny your petition.

>3) If she tries to move into discussing relationship issues
>from the past (not related to domestic violence or anything
>like that -she tends to want to discuss her resentment over
>the way our relationship ended), do I need to respond to
>those, or focus my replies on the fact that we are in court to
>discuss our son's best interests?

If in court, you simply say, "Your honor, I really must object to this as irrelevant. The issue now is our child's best interests, not past resentments of the parents." Your objective is to show the court that you are reasonable, and your opponent is not.

>4) Is there an overall demeanor in court that will be helpful
>to my situation? For example, professional, non-emotional,
>etc?

You're not an attorney, so if you act too professional, the judge will think you're acting. If you act to cavalier, you will be viewed as undeserving. You want to look and act like a normal parent who wants time with his child, and nothing more nor less.

However, don't get caught in the mistaken belief that this is traffic court or "Judge Judy," because it's not. You will be expected to know the law to the extent necessary to defend your interests, and frankly, if your opponent hires an attorney, then you should seriously consider doing the same.