[quote=Blogstar]Thanks BG, I am reading and paying attention. I am not giving anyone a big deposit before I really understand what is going on. I have before and I will again pay for hourly consultation. Nothing against that at all.
A few reasons I don’t want to go pro-per:
Dealing with bad clerks. Dealing with one official saying things work one way and another official saying they work another way. A lawyer would know who was right. I know that procedure alone could be a nightmare. Even just to subpoena records, I got a complete run-around until I gave up, for the time being. Not to say that I can’t try again.
Lots of reasons for DYI too.[/quote]
IIRC, Subpeona Duces Tecum (SDT’s) have 27 steps to their preparation, filing and service to legally compel the other party to comply with it. They are among the trickiest documents to properly execute, even for an experienced paralegal or attorney (depending on the nature of records being sought). In most cases, you will not be able to see what the opposing party has produced until the day you (both, hopefully) show up in court because they are typically sent to your court department directly. Hence, you better be a very quick study and take very good notes of them in the short recess you are provided (for review of the docs, NOT keeping them).
SD Superior Court clerks and their supervisors are not allowed to give “legal advice” to members of the public. If caught, they can be disciplined for doing so. All they can basically do is sell you forms and tell you the procedure for filing them. They cannot tell you how to fill out the forms! The only exception that I know of is that of obtaining a TRO. Superior Court Clerks exist for the express purpose of meeting in person each party wanting to file a TRO and filling out the forms for them, serving the other party and filing the TRO pkg. This is only to get the matter into a (domestic) courtroom fairly quickly where a judge or other magistrate will sort out the situation to see if it warrants a more permanent restraining order. If it doesn’t, that could later hurt the TRO filer’s case if the parties have another domestic case pending on dissolution and/or child custody.
SD County also has a Family Court Facilitator’s Office set up to help domestic litigants in pro per by appt only (after a very long wait in line to get an appt scheduled) so their cases (dissolution and/or child custody/child support) will timely move thru the system. But they do not accept civil litigants and only accept the most basic of dissolution and/or child custody/child support cases.
