subject: One Critical (and Practical!) Tip On How To Fight A Restraining Order [print this page] If you're fighting a restraining order during a custody case against your ex, I'm going to share a critical yet practical tip that should serve you well. Basically it's to start saving all the paperwork that relates to your custody case, no matter how trivial you think it is.
The kind of paperwork that I'm talking about includes the following items:
* store receipts
* e-mails
* automatically-logged archives of instant-message communication
* phone bills
* names, dates and locations of any incidents with witnesses
The reason for this is simple: what you think might be an irrelevant fact might actually provide a crucial piece of evidence that you rely upon in court at a late date.
If you're not already aware of how restraining orders work in custody cases, I'll explain. Evidence is one of the make-or-break factors in how to fight a restraining order, because the burden of proof is so low - forget the idea of "beyond reasonable doubt" which is the level reserved for criminal cases. When it comes to getting a restraining order granted permanently, if you are without evidence, you're facing a 'his-word-against-hers' situation, which comes as a massive shock to most fathers when they try to start figuring out how to fight a restraining order for the first time in their lives. And the unfortunate reality is that a judge will generally side in favor of the plaintiff (your ex) if you don't have evidence to prove that the reasons given for the restraining order are false.
To give a real life example of the sort of thing I'm talking about, I'll explain why this tip made such a dramatic impact on my winning 100% custody of my two sons.
Essentially, my ex-wife had accused me of violating the restraining order restrictions after the paperwork was served. She accused me of contacting her to complain about maintenance payments. However, I was able to prove that I wasn't (and couldn't have been) in our town. How was I able to do this? I'd saved a store receipt for business expense filing, so I was able to pinpoint where I'd been on the date in question. More importantly, I was able to identify the time I'd been in the store in the afternoon so that camera records could be subpoenaed to the court showing how impossible it was to be 100 miles east just 30 minutes later.
The above situation provides a really good insight into why this is such an invaluable tip to pass on. Just make sure that you keep any paperwork safe that you think could have an impact on the outcome of your custody case whilst you're fighting a restraining order. At best, it's a "get out of jail" card which allows you to be around to see your kids grow up - and what could be more valuable than that?
