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Golden Rules when representing yourself. Part 1

Success in litigation depends on three things:

  • the facts,
  • the law and
  • the presentation;

that is:

  1. how strong and reliable your evidence is to establish the facts;
  2. whether the law can be used in your favour;
  3. how clearly and coherently you present your case.

To make the most of these three ingredients for success there are some important rules, learnt the hard way by Australia’s best and worst litigation lawyers. As you’ll see, to use them you don’t need a law degree. Here they are:

THE GOLDEN RULES

THE DOs
DO YOUR HOMEWORK; BE PREPARED

The first thing to do is contact family relationship centres and get parent “counselling”. Start a parenting course. Get the certificate. It’s also vital for properly preparing you for a Family Report. If you don’t speak the language family professionals use, and you don’t acquire some new, higher skills for this new situation, you can easily end up with a negative evaluation, resulting in limited supervised access instead of what could have been full shared parenting. Yes, the difference can be that great.

As one member said,

“One of the first things I did after separating was to seek relationship counselling. I went to directly to our local family relationship centre; began talking to them first, and initiated the process to create a family/co-parenting plan. Best move I ever made. Now I have shared custody (week on/week off split) of my child.”

Stay tuned for the nex installment…

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