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Today I'm going to help you understand how to be prepared for your own deposition in a family law case. I'm Ron Gore, co owner of Co Parent Academy, a family law attorney. And let's get started. The first thing to prepare for your deposition is to make sure that you've told your attorney absolutely everything. Too often, clients don't tell their attorneys everything about themselves in their case, and it undercuts your attorney's ability to assist you. People don't like to tell their attorney everything for lots of different reasons. Sometimes it's just the expense. It takes a long time to have that kind of conversation, and time is money. You don't want to pay your attorney any more than you have to, so you figure you're just going to tell your attorney what is relevant in your mind and nothing else, and then that will be good enough. The problem is, is that you don't necessarily know what's relevant. You're not capable of doing the issue spotting that your attorney is. If they're a qualified attorney, because of their education and experience, they can make connections to your family law cases that wouldn't even have crossed your mind. So you have to make sure you tell your attorney everything. Sometimes people don't like to tell their attorney things because it's just embarrassing. They don't want to have to say that to anybody. Maybe it's just an embarrassing situation. Maybe you feel like you've done something inappropriate and haven't quite come to terms with it and it's still a raw subject for you. Whatever it is, you've got to make sure that you tell your attorney everything. If you're getting into a custody dispute, there's a very good chance, especially if you're being deposed, that all of this is going to come to light anyway. So it's best to make sure your attorney understands everything up front so that there's no surprises and you can be properly advised about what to do about what a reasonable outcome is. So once you've told your attorney everything, they can help you understand what the issues are. Like I mentioned before, a big part of the job of a family law attorney is issue spotting of taking the facts that you presented, taking the law, taking the proclivities of a specific judge, for example, knowing what they tend to do or not do, and then be able to organize those into issues that need to be addressed. These are going to be the topics of the deposition that are going to be covered. And so having this conversation with your attorney helps prepare the attorney to educate you about what the issues are and what the probability of success in these various areas of the litigation are. Once you've had that conversation with your attorney, now that you're fully informed about what the situation is from a legal perspective, now you can do a better job of coming up with what your true reasonable expectations are. A lot of times people come in with expectations when they meet with their attorney for the first time that are just completely unreasonable either because they don't understand the law. They haven't really taken a hard look at themselves to see what their own deficiencies are. And once you've been able to have this counsel from your attorney, then you're going to be in a much better position to be able to sit down and say, okay, A is reasonable on my list that I came in with, B is unreasonable. We need to move to, you know, C on my list instead of B. So whatever those issues are, you're now going to have a better opportunity to have reasonable expectations about likely outcomes, and that's going to inform the deposition. Part of the way it can inform the deposition is now you can make stipulations. If your now reasonable expectations coincide on some levels with the expectations of the other party, you may be able to reach some stipulations and take some issues out of the mix when it comes to the deposition. If you can have agreements in writing stipulating that certain things were going to be the case, then you no longer have to sit through a deposition about it. Potentially, that will save you time and money and potentially embarrassment and potentially other conflict that you didn't even anticipate might happen. So having those reasonable expectations, reaching agreements where possible, is really helpful. Once you've done that and you're about to get to the deposition on this set of remaining issues, make sure that you know the facts. So often people come into depositions and they don't know basic things that they should know. If you're going to be deposed about physical custody, then you need to make sure that you know everything about your child's daily activities. Who is your child's doctor? Dentist, you know, if they're in therapy, who's the therapist? You need to know about your teachers and your child's grades and how their work is going this semester. You need to make sure that you know your own work schedule. You'd be surprised. Maybe you wouldn't. But sometimes people come in and feign ignorance about their own work schedules. So you need to know the details about that. Anything that has to do with your life, your child's Life. You need to know all of the details to be able to give full answers. You need to know what you want. You know, what are you looking for in terms of physical custody? What kind of timeshare are you interested in? What holidays are important to you? If we're talking about legal custody, what are the areas of decision making that you're most concerned about? Why are you concerned about those? What's important to you in those areas? What do you think is in your child's best interest? These are all things that could be asked of you at a deposition. And it's important that you know your own mind about it before you go in and you get asked under oath. Because if you change your position later, you're now creating an environment in which you can be impeached. You know, you may be asked later, well, you said this on this day and this on that day. Why did it change now? Maybe it changed for a very good reason. You know, time passes, things happen, but maybe there hasn't been something that really changed and you don't have a good answer for why you have a different position. It's something to be thinking about. You need to address your own issues before you go in. Look back over your communications. Have you been a jerk? What were you a jerk about? Do you think that you could have done better in certain areas of communication or co parenting or decision making? If so, I think it's a good idea to address that in the deposition. If you're asked about it, don't necessarily have this knee jerk reaction that I'm perfect and the other parent is flawed. That's unrealistic. It's not human. What's most likely the case is that you both have issues. You both have acted inappropriately at times. And to the extent that you can answer honestly and not try to cover up or make, you know, unreasonable excuses, tried to hide the ball, that's just going to be used against you later. So I think always honesty is the best policy and being able to have some self reflection about how you've done is really important. There are likely some things that are not issues for you per se, but are issues for the other side. Things that they really care about, things that they've expressed you or concerns for them. You should go back and look at what those issues are and be prepared to be asked about them. What's your thought about their issue? You know, what's your counter position to what their position is? Having a thoughtful response can go a long way. One of the things that it can do is to help the other attorney understand that you're going to be a good witness. You know, if I'm deposing someone and they're doing a really poor job, if they're being super defensive, if they don't know the information, if they're just being kind of a jerk in the deposition, then I'm thinking to myself, this is actually really good material for the deposition. But also I'm getting the sense that they're going to be a terrible witness if it comes to a trial. The better you're able to address your own issues, to know your mind, to know the facts of the situation, to be prepared to have a response to the other side's issues or concerns, the more the other attorney is going to be thinking to themselves, this is going to be a pretty good witness. You know, I'm not seeing a lot here. Yeah, I can, I can hit them on this conduct that they've engaged in, maybe, but they're, they're showing that they understand why it was wrong. And if they then make a change, you know, if they then improve the situation, that shows the court that it's someone who is open to improving and maybe can be relied upon to be a good co parent down the road. So a strong performance at a deposition can actually save you a lot of time and money by helping the other side know that maybe we need to think about some agreements instead of going to litigation on this. All right. Lastly, it's important to know how to participate properly in the deposition. So one of the things that I see people do is they just will be aggressive, rude, short with the attorney asking them questions. You should always be at least as kind and deferential to the person asking you questions as you would be to the judge if you were sitting in front of the judge. It's important to listen to the questions very carefully and only answer what's asked. So the purpose of a deposition is to get expansive, to find out everything you know about all of the issues that are relevant. But that doesn't mean that you have to volunteer everything all the time for every question. So listen to the question that has been provided to you and then answer just that question. Now, if it's a yes or no question, then just answer yes or no if possible. If it's not possible, then let the person asking the question no, it's not possible to answer that as just yes or no and allow them to give you some follow up. If you don't know the answer, just say, I don't know. If you knew the answer in the past, but you can't recollect it right now. You just say, I don't recall. And that's the difference between I don't know and I don't recall. All I don't recall is I knew it at one point, but I don't remember it now. If you give me some information to refresh my recollection, I may be able to come up with it. I don't know means I don't know now. I didn't know in the past, I just don't know. I don't have that information at all. As you're answering questions, it's important to take your time. Now, typically in depositions, objections are going to be asked to form only. So you're still probably going to have to answer the question, but you have to go slowly enough in answering the question, one, so that you're actually thinking about it before you answer it, but two, so that you give your attorney the opportunity to make an objection on the record. If you answer so quickly that the attorney can't get in there, then you lose the opportunity for the objection that may be beneficial to you at trial. So give your attorney a chance to make an objection. A big mistake that people make is trying to get ahead of the attorney, trying to mind read the attorney, asking them questions, and think about what the attorney is going for. Like they try to think, oh, you're trying to get me to say this three questions down the line. The problem with that is that typically you're not going to be experienced enough with depositions. You're not going to have a full enough understanding of the law, and you're just not going to be fast enough intellectually to to do that. You can't both listen and answer, well the question that was posed and be thinking about three or four questions down the line what you think this other attorney might be trying to get at. It's a recipe for disaster. The cognitive overload is just way too high. So instead, just answer each question truthfully as it comes. If it turns out to be a negative outcome because you answer truthfully, that's just what it is. The whole purpose is to answer truthfully under oath, the question that's asked you as it's asked. Another thing's really just to try to focus on sticking to exactly what was asked. Silence is a magnificent tool in a deposition. A skilled attorney will typically have some long pauses that create pressure on the witness to fill the silence with information. What the witness fills the silence with typically, is the thing that they're concerned about. So a great way for an attorney conducting a deposition to learn what the witness is worried about is to just not ask anything at all for a few seconds to create some silence for that witness's subconscious to just get rolling, to kick up those fears and then to say things that are the result of their fears. That provides a wealth of information for the attorney to use, and it creates a bunch of opportunities for additional questions that maybe the attorney had no idea were even relevant in the first place. They may not have known anything about it until you said something. So just stick to what was asked. If there are silences, just sit there silently. Do not feel like you have to fill the gap. If they have another question, they're going to ask you what the question is. Now, if there's information that you think also should have come out but you didn't get a chance to say it, trust in your attorney to come in and clean it up so your attorney will have the opportunity to ask questions if they choose to, after the opposing attorney has asked questions. If it's important to come in and clean up something that was said that was maybe unclear or ambiguous or needed further explanation, trust that your attorney is going to take the opportunity to do that. So a deposition is a truly powerful tool in family law cases. If you prepare well for your deposition, then it will be a useful tool not just for the attorney taking the deposition, but for your attorney as well. It can create an opportunity to shortcut the litigation process. It can lead to agreements, and when it comes to trial, it can provide some structure for everyone to know what's going to be asked, what the deficiencies are. It just gives everyone more information to make the litigation process more helpful for the court in reaching decisions about the best interests of the children. And that's ultimately what what it's about is, the children's best interests. Thank you very much. I hope this was helpful for you. If you enjoyed this content. If you found it to be useful, please like and share. Subscribe all those things. Comment if you want to about your thoughts about depositions. Did you have a deposition experience that you thought was, I don't know, interesting or scary or funny or whatever it was? Let us know if you want more co parenting information, check us out@coparentacademy.com where we have articles, we have courses, we have everything that you need. Thank you for listening. Have a great day.
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