Gathering Evidence When Representing Yourself in Divorce

Some choose to go through a family court case without an attorney and the reason is because they cannot afford one.  I know that's the case with many of the people who watch Command the Courtroom weekly videos. They are on their own they're trying to figure it out and make the best case possible for themselves.

This particular viewer asked me if he's representing himself in his divorce case yet he does still have a little bit of money to spend is there some way that he could spend his resources to help him in his case?

I will start out by saying it this is not a one-size-fits-all answer. The answer could depend on the case and the facts and the person and the people involved but if it were me going through a case and I didn't have the resources to hire an attorney but I had a few hundred dollars to spend on something, what i would do is use that money towards gathering evidence that I intend to present during the divorce or custody hearing in the event that the case goes to hearing.

Or gathering the evidence to help support my position when I'm negotiating with the other side. Evidence is everything in these family law cases when you get to trial you have to show the judge your evidence if you are trying to persuade the other side to do what you want or to accept an offer that you've extended or presented to them with the reasons why your offer should be accepted.

Or gathering the evidence to help support my position when I'm negotiating with the other side. Evidence is everything in these family law cases when you get to trial you have to show the judge your evidence if you are trying to persuade the other side to do what you want or to accept an offer that you've extended or presented to them with the reasons why your offer should be accepted, why it is supported and the only way you can do this is with evidence.

There are tons of different types of evidence that you can get to support your case and some of them are free. They can be text messages, email messages, video recordings, audio recordings, voice recordings , phone messages and those are just a few of the types that I commonly seen my practice every day.

There are other types of evidence however that are not necessarily difficult to get but they do cost money and these types of evidence requires subpoenas for example in a lot of my family law cases child support is an issue and oftentimes what I want to do is find out what the other side has going on in terms of bank accounts especially if the other side is the one who has a support obligation and they're not they're claiming that they can't afford to pay child support or that they can only pay limited amount of the day they only make a certain amount of money .

So what I often do in those cases a subpoena bank records and it costs money to issue the subpoena from the clerk of the court and for specific instructions on how to assistant subpoena or issue get subpoenas issued in your jurisdiction.