How Your Judge Can Help You Move Your Divorce Case Forward

Fighting in a ship on the ocean floor 

Dying over who drowns first

            -Hanson, 2019

In our 4-part series on discovery, we discussed ways the court (generally) and your judge (specifically) can help you if you’re running into roadblocks trying to get information you need for your case.

In this next 3-part series, we’ll explore other ways the judge can help you move your case forward to get through the stress of your case to your better “after.”

We’ll cover:

• How judges help settle cases
• How judges can help you get short-term relief
• How judges can help you push your case along

To keep it short and sweet, we’ll lay out different ways you can get help from the court using the What-Who-When-Why-How format.

Before diving in, we want to be open about the fact that some judges are better at certain tasks than others.

 After all, judges are people with different skill sets, backgrounds, training and personalities.

Different strengths are needed for different roles such as:

• patience - to work with people who aren’t getting along
• creativity - to find solutions
• wisdom/experience – to draw on for complicated cases

You get the idea.

It’s important to understand that no judge is superhuman and there is a limit to what even the best judge can accomplish. It’s important to try to figure out what your judge is like (if you’re in a county with assigned judges) so you are confident that they can help.

If you’re in a county where they have “master dockets,” meaning the judges take turns handling the family cases, it’s important to get a sense of who all the judges are. This is why going to court to watch other cases is so helpful.

Asking around in your community, talking to friends or meeting with an unbundled lawyer can also help you form an idea about your judge(s).

THE JUDGE AS MEDIATOR: The Settlement Conference

What are Settlement Conferences?

Settlement conferences are a type of divorce mediation where you can meet to try to resolve non-child issues such as support (spousal or child), property division and debt assignment. The settlement judge doesn’t decide these issues. She or he will act as a neutral to try to help you both work out a settlement.

Settlement conferences are “confidential” so what’s said in the conference can’t be used against you. 

If you are able to reach a settlement, the settlement judge will put your terms “on the record,” meaning you’ll go into the courtroom and a recording will be made of the terms and your agreement to them.

That part of the process is not confidential and can be used to enforce the deal if someone tries to back out later.

Who Should Attend a Settlement Conference? 

You and your spouse/partner/co-parent will meet with a judge who is not assigned to your case or won’t be able to be your trial judge if you don’t settle your case.

If one or both of you have lawyers, they can go to the settlement conference.

If you get advice from a financial person, or other expert, you probably can bring them as long as you clear it with the judge first. However, bringing a friend or a family member is not usually done and can blow up a settlement conference, especially if your spouse/partner or co parent has bad feelings about the person you want to bring.

When is the Settlement Conference Held? 

Like mandatory parenting/custody mediation, you can only ask for a settlement conference after you have an open case. That means either you or your spouse/partner or co-parent has already filed papers with the court.

Once that’s done, you can request a settlement conference. However, that may be too early for one or both of you.

To give yourself the best chance of settling, you want to go to a settlement conference after you’ve done your homework so you’re clear about:

• All the property that either or both of you own
• All the debts that either or both of you owe
• The income you both have
• The expenses you both have

The same is true for your spouse/partner or co-parent. They need to understand the financial picture too.

Also, if an asset hasn’t been dealt with in your case because one side hid it, the other side can re-open the case later, although this is never an easy or inexpensive process.

Why Have a Settlement Conference? 

As of the writing of this post, it’s estimated that between 95%-98% of all cases settle without a trial.

So, it’s less a question of if you’ll settle as when you’ll settle.

The trick is to settle as soon as you can after you’ve both done your homework so you don’t burn up a lot of time, money and bad feelings before settling.

Even if you can’t settle every issue, you can settle some issues. That narrows down what you leave to chance (which is what trials are and why so many families try to avoid them). It also makes it easier to get court time and saves money.

How to Request a Settlement Conference? 

To get a judicial settlement conference set up, you just need to ask for it.

You can do this with a letter or an email. But, unlike custody/parenting mediation, you can’t force your spouse, co-parent or partner to go to a settlement conference. Both sides have to agree which means you have to get their agreement.

A text, letter or email showing that they agree is helpful to have so the judge knows that the time they are setting aside for you isn’t going to be wasted by a no-show by one of you.

We hope this post gives you some ideas to make your case easier, faster, less stressful and more affordable than if you simply “climb abord the trial train.”

If you have a lawyer, they can walk you through their plan for trying to settle your case; if you are representing yourself, you can talk to an unbundled or limited scope attorney to prepare you for your settlement conference.