Diaries: Can They Become Evidence During a Custody Battle in Orlando?

During a typical divorce, a child may express a wide range of thoughts, emotions, and concerns. Although it might be difficult to keep track of them while focusing on other aspects of your divorce, documenting your child’s journey could be beneficial. Should you be writing these thoughts and emotions down in some kind of diary? Could existing diaries become evidence in a custody case? This is a conversation you might want to have with an experienced child custody attorney in Orlando.

Diaries May Become Relevant During Discovery

Assuming that mediation fails during your child custody case, the dispute will go to trial. If this occurs, both parents will go through a pre-trial process called discovery. During discovery, both parties can request any relevant documentation or evidence from one another. Diaries may become relevant as a result.

Although you might assume that a private diary is somehow protected from being passed around during discovery, there is no law that keeps these documents confidential. As long as the diary itself is relevant to the custody case, it may become evidence. This could be your personal diary, your ex’s diary, or your child’s diary.

A diary is only effective as evidence if its entries are contemporaneous with the events they describe. In other words, the author of the diary must have created their entries at the same general time as the events. If someone creates a diary and writes about events that have already happened, it is not a diary at all but rather a written statement based on a person’s recollections of the events. As a result, a diary entry describing an event immediately after it occurred could potentially be stronger evidence of that event occurring than a person’s testimony months or years later.

Can I Use a Diary Strategically for a Custody Case?

Now that you know that a diary can become evidence in a custody case, you can strategically use a journal to pursue positive outcomes. The most obvious approach is to keep a written journal as soon as the divorce begins.

Write about anything that might be relevant to the custody case, especially the thoughts, feelings, and words of your child. You might also want to write about things that your ex is doing or saying. Your journal may even save your child from having to testify or submit to an interview with a judge, which can be incredibly stressful.

Can a Child Custody Lawyer in Orlando Help Me?

A child custody lawyer in Orlando may be able to help you use diaries strategically as you fight for your parental rights. Although it might seem like a violation of privacy, your whole family’s private diaries could become evidence during a custody case. The key is to make sure your diary entries provide evidence that benefits your position instead of damaging it. Discuss this subject in more detail with Steve Marsee, P.A.

Source:

 ifstudies.org/blog/journaling-through-a-divorce-decision-a-case-study