Before the new judge

I finally appeared yesterday before the new family court judge in town, Judge Heather Morse.

The first case was a financial dispute. Both sides had lawyers. The issues go back to 2004, and one lawyer requested a 6-day trial. They got a 3-day trial in December. Both lawyers seemed incompetent, as no one was sure what issues were at stake, or what discovery needed to be completed, or even who had paid whom how much money. Eg, the wife's lawyer wanted the husband's tax return for this year to see how much alimony she had been paid. The judge listened to all this discussion, but got nowhere and just made a minor discovery ruling.

The next case was a mom who had lost custody of a 5-year-old because of an addiction to painkillers. Judge Morse kept her on supervised visits, but implied that she would get something better after doing drug rehab and developing a record of clean drug tests.

For our case, Judge Morse groaned that the case was now on the seventh volume (file folder). She scheduled a trial, and said that the earliest available dates are in November. I had to beg for permission for my witnesses to see the court reports.