Going to court on a family law motion, even if you have a lawyer, can be a bewildering thing. There are rules, rules, and more rules – then there are customs that are generally followed but not even written down anywhere (like the purple cover sheet form used for family law motions for reconsideration, found at the family law motions office at each courthouse).
Various county rules overlay state-wide rules
How do all these sets of rules work together? Without understanding this, there’s no way to figure out what rules actually apply to your particular case. The best way to think about these rules is as a set of transparent overlays on an overhead projector. Each set sits on top of another set of rules, and so on:
- The very first set of rules are the state-wide GR’s or General Rules. The GR’s relate to all proceedings, and are a hodgpodge of rules that, for the most part, you don’t need to worry about – GR 11 says that foreign language interpreters may be used, for example. One GR that is useful is GR 14, which explains that the papers you file need to be on 8 1/2 by 11 inch paper, with a top margin of 3 inches, etc. – and no colored pages. How you reconcile this last point with the colored reconsideration cover sheet is anyone’s guess….
- The main state-wide rules in family law are the CR’s or Superior Court Civil Rules. The CR’s govern not just family law, but all Superior Court Civil cases, including real estate litigation, civil litigation, and so forth. They do not govern criminal cases, appellate cases, mental proceedings cases, juvenile court cases, mandatory arbitration, cases in district court, cases in municipal court, etc. They also do not govern any case in Federal Court – a totally separate court system that handles bankruptcies and many major civil and criminal cases.
- Think of the CR’s as giving rules for both hearings on your case, and the underlying case itself. The underlying case includes how you file suit, how you conduct discovery (get information from the other party, and from third parties), and how you conduct trial. Motions in family law cases, on the other hand, are generally interim rulings that try to keep things more or less together (parenting plan, who pays the bills, child support, etc.) until a Judge makes a final ruling on everything (or you settle).
- In addition to state-wide rules, counties are also allowed to create LCR’s, or Local Civil Rules – so long as they do not contradict the CR’s. Like the state-wide CR’s, the LCR’s govern all sorts of civil cases. Some small counties have next to no LCR’s. But the bigger the county, the more local rules it has.
- On top of the LCR’s sit the LFLR’s or Local Family Law Rules.
Sorting out the CR's, LCR's, and LFLR's can be tricky.
There aren’t many LFLR’s – just 17 – and in theory, they sit on top of both the LCR’s and the CR’s, supplementing but never contradicting. The problem is that while each LCR maps directly to a corresponding CR (LCR 7 –> CR 7), the LFLR’s are free-floating. So LFLR isn’t about civil motions at all; it’s about Unified Family Court. The rules that supplement CR7 / LCR 7 can be found in LFLR 2, 4, 5, 6, 8, 10, 12 & 17.
Now, this isn’t as crazy as it may sound. The reason for free-floating LFLR’s is that most of the special rules for family law relate in some way to a family law motion. So breaking them down into separate rules is a way of avoiding having to number a rule, for example: LFLR 7(b)(6)(A)(iii) – which is what you’d likely get if you put them all under LFLR 7. Also, the LFLR’s are, as far they go, fairly well written and straight-forward.
The final set of rules you may come across, primarily at trial but also sometimes in hearings, are the ER’s, or Rules of Evidence. These rules talk about what a court may consider (such as business records) and not consider (such as most hearsay statements).
The rules are certainly more complex than they ought to be be. Right now it’s tough even for lawyers to sort out the various rules, much less non-lawyers. People ought to hire lawyers for our judgment and our advocacy, not because the rules don’t make sense. As long as the rules remain complex and sometimes contradictory, it’s an issue not just of clarity but of access to justice for all our citizens – not just the ones who can afford a lawyer.
As the chair of the local rules committee, I (along with the committee) am actively working with the Court to help standardize and simplify these rules. But it’s a big job with zero funding.
Wish us luck!
