Clients often complain a judge’s decisions are arbitrary and uninformed. It helps to illustrate exactly what happens to information in the litigation process.
A family court judge has a lot of information thrown at them in very short timelines.
Depending upon your jurisdiction, a judge might have to here every piece of a case from spouses bad-mouthing one another to accusations of infidelity to child custody disputes and forensic accounting to prove lifestyle or separate property claims. It is natural for there to be two sides to each issue as divorce is a dispute after all so the judge must often here the same story twice just told in two different ways.
Judges are tasked with listening, understanding and ultimately rendering decisions. In order to do so they must understand the flow of information and our clients should too.
Where to begin
When it comes to a family’s financial picture it is unlikely that anyone will start a divorce proceeding with an accurate and complete picture of everything. This is why data-gathering is so important to a divorce case. The largest box in the cartoon represents the actual complete financial picture.
An attorney is tasked with gaining an understanding of the family financial picture in order to educate a judge and argue their client’s case in a divorce matter. It will never be 100% complete and 100% accurate because it is not their life. It is rare that an individual has a complete and accurate understanding of their own finances. It would be overly optimistic to assume an attorney can ever understand something more intimately than their clients.
In any contested divorce case their will be two opinions and maybe even two sets of data. In a perfect world you could at least agree upon the data but discovery problems, stonewalling and lack of trust cause problems. So it follows that a judge hears two sides of the same story and given even less time than the attorneys had, must assimilate the knowledge imparted by both lawyers into their own understanding. Given the lack of time and the need for summary data the judge will understand even less.
The result
Ultimately a judge must then make a decision based on the testimony, evidence and legal arguments which will render some of what they learn from the lawyers to be worthless. After three days of trial and various conflicting points of view the judge is left with a microcosm of the original financial picture and they render an opinion which is ultimately turned into an order.
So, next time you are wondering about the value of information in a divorce case, do your best to keep the decisions in the hands of those who know best: the clients.
Wellspring Divorce Advisors helps individuals and couples address the financial aspects of divorce in a civilized, equitable, and efficient manner by providing expert divorce financial planning and advice.
Contact us to find out how we can help you through this process.
