? on deadline for responsive declaration

[DecentDad]

Hi Soc,

Reminder, I have four matters on calendar for May 24:

A) OSC to determine elementary school was continued from April 29

B) Clarify orders on Friday exchanges (due to biomom's decision to keep child home from preschool on Fridays and frustrate mid-day pick-up until later in the evening, her argument that preschool isn't "school", and her argument that "if no school" refers to child's attendance rather than school being in session or not)

C) Clarify orders on phone access (due to biomom's on-going refusal to allow phone contact under "No restrictions on phone access" that isn't specific enough to enforce)

D) Clarify orders on summer vacation (due to biomom's interpretation that "two weeks uninterrupted vacation" means she can split it up into however many vacation periods she wants totalling 14 days and/or 336 hours).


For elementary school selection, biomom timely served a responsive declaration and timely served a supplemental responsive declaration.

On the other three matters, I haven't received any response at all.  I've twice sent correspondence to opposing counsel, seeking to settle on my proposed language to clarify orders else for her to propose language that would similarly tighten them beyond question.


1.  Can you confirm my thought that deadline for responding on those matters is either 5 days (personal service) or 10 days (service by mail)?

2.  If there is no responsive declaration, have you experienced that it usually indicates a particular outcome if the moving party is requesting reasonable orders?

3.  If I'm not served timely (i.e., I guess yesterday was the deadline for personal service?), is it worth objecting (and would I do that prior to hearing via written objections, or at time of hearing orally)?

Thanks,
DD

[socrateaser]

>1.  Can you confirm my thought that deadline for responding on
>those matters is either 5 days (personal service) or 10 days
>(service by mail)?
>
>2.  If there is no responsive declaration, have you
>experienced that it usually indicates a particular outcome if
>the moving party is requesting reasonable orders?

You could find that your opponent will file her response immediately prior to the hearing, and hand it to you in the hallway. If this occurs, I suggest that you move to have the response excluded on grounds that it was not served timely. However, the court isn't required to accomodate your request. The court could simply give you a few minutes adjournment to consider the response or it could offer to continue the matter until another day. Or, you can ask for either option.

You may want to do the latter, because that will cost your opponent money, and give you an opportunity to consider the issues further. Or, you may choose to go ahead with the hearing, believing that this is mostly a stall tactic, or even perhaps just a means of trying to trip you up.

I wait until the last second all the time to respond, rrequently, I go past the deadline, especially at a support hearing, and even when responding to an attorney, because I know that they're not gonna read the pleadings until the end, and that keeps them from doing their homework.

The legal deal is that the court does not have to exclude relevant evidence for "unfair surprise," or for late service. The only reqirement is that the court provides you with a reasonable opportunity to consider the issues in advance of the hearing.

Deadlines matter when the issue is contempt or when it's a summons. But deadlines on ongoing process are missed routinely, and the court isn't gonna be real interested -- it wants all the facts, regardless of when they are submitted.

[DecentDad]

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