The Beginning of the End

Previously we talked about mediation and settlement agreements, but this begs the question of what happens when settlement negotiations fail.

Impasse. Final Hearing. Court.

This is the beginning of the true end of your case.

If you have not had depositions in your case for any reason, then it is likely that your attorney is going to want to hold depositions before you head to a final hearing. Also, during this period, your lawyer is updating financial information and perhaps requesting information from your spouse for things that the mediation process may have uncovered.

Notice for Ready for Trial

Once you and your lawyer feel comfortable with the information you have obtained to move forward, one side will file a pleading called a Notice for Ready for Trial.

This is the formal request for a final hearing in your case.

The Notice for Ready for Trial will outline how long of a hearing the filing party is asking the Court to reserve to hear your case. The length of a final hearing will vary with the case’s complexity and sometimes depends on the attorneys involved and the parties themselves.

For example, I am typically a very fast talker in court (no lawyer jokes, please), and because I speak quickly, I can sometimes ask for a shorter period for a hearing because I know I can cover a lot in a short amount of time. This could allow a hearing or trial to get set more quickly since the Court dockets are very full, and it is harder to find long blocks of time than short ones on the Court’s calendars. I will consider how quickly my judge likes to pace their courtrooms, and I may also consider the number of witnesses and their testimony style.

If your case has a lot of experts, it will likely require a lot of the Court’s time.

Case Management Hearing

Once a Notice has been filed, the other side can object for various reasons, although the statutory objections are quite limited. Then, typically a Case Management Hearing is held to discern what needs to be done by both sides to finalize the case and get it ready for trial. If there is no objection, some judges allow offices to coordinate a date and time without the Case Management Hearing.

Note on Case Management Hearings; they require your presence but generally will have no testimony and will only involve the attorneys who will discuss logistics and deadlines with the Judge. They can be very helpful in resolving discovery objections and deadlines so that the lawyers can organize and schedule the last several months of the case to ensure that the final hearing is smooth.

Preparing For Your Final Hearing

The time between mediation and a final hearing could be a long wait. By now, if you are in a family law case, divorce, in particular, you are getting familiar with the long periods that you are required to wait while time ticks by with no resolution to your pending issues.

This last period of waiting can feel like the longest, unless you are the party who may be resisting the divorce, and, in that case, it could feel like it is going at warp speed to the end.

The Emotional Toll

Remember that all of the emotions that you are feeling are valid and are likely very normal responses for people going through a divorce. Continue to be easy on yourself, but you also may feel another flood of emotions. Remember my advice about a good therapist and be in contact with your mental health professional if and when the emotions come flooding back. You need to be in the right state of mind for your final hearing so that you can present the best case to the Judge and so that you can focus.

Be an Active Participant

When your lawyer gets into preparation mode, understand that you may feel somewhat out of the loop as they organize all of the facts and information they have accumulated throughout your case to present coherently to the Judge. Be available to help with any quick questions and recognize that sometimes you may have answered the question before or provided information to the attorney before. Still, it could be cheaper for the lawyer’s office to ask you again rather than comb back through voluminous messages or emails. Be prepared to actively participate in the process by being willing to provide quick responses.

During the time between mediation and a final hearing, you could be instructed by your attorney to do certain things to improve your case. It could be that it is time to get a job or that you need to brush up on some parenting issues that could impact your case as it relates to parenting factors. Listen to this advice because by this point in your case, your attorney can assess your case’s strengths and weaknesses and will know what needs to be done to improve your case before a judge makes final decisions about the future of your family.

The Expense

The other main thing you need to be prepared for at this stage in the game is the expense. Divorce is expensive, a fact that you have probably already learned firsthand.

Final hearings are even more costly.

As a rule of thumb, I like to estimate the cost of a final hearing to be the number of hours in Court times two for preparation time. So, for every hour your lawyer will be in Court, they will need two hours of preparation time out of Court. In addition, you can expect that there will be about the same, if not more, staff preparation time. Hence, a Final Hearing is the most expensive part of your case.

If you are concerned about the costs of going to a final hearing, you need to talk to your lawyer to clearly define how much you are able and willing to pay. If there are limited funds, you need to decide where you want your lawyer to focus their preparation time to best argue the issues that are most important to you.

Final Hearings are not all bad, and they can provide closure and resolution to issues that simply cannot be resolved between the parties.

If your lawyer has advised you that the only way to resolve your case is to go to a final hearing, then trust in the process that the law will be applied to your facts in an unbiased and fair way.

Just remember, this is also the battlefield of divorce. It can be bloody and leave scars on a family for years, so make sure you are heading to a judge for resolution for the right reasons.