To think jury duty is going to ruin my summer plans

[sulkingaboutjuryduty]

Got my jury duty summons which I was fairly gutted about, having recently returned from mat leave, I'm a part time accountant and I love my job.

Asked to defer and was declined, so it starts on 16th August. I have a 15 month old and a 3.5year old, the 3.5 year old has 30 free hours which I use on my 3 working days and then the baby is with my mum. In six week holidays I was planning to take a mixture of annual leave, pay for holiday clubs and mum will help out a bit. Now there will be at least 2 weeks of their "school holidays" where I can't do anything with them, I've got to fork out for childcare over and above my working pattern and reading the leaflet, it doesn't qualify for claiming back?

My work have been great and said they will pay my normal salary so I won't need to claim loss of earnings but if I've got to put them in childcare it's going to cost me a fortune! My mum can't have them on my non working weekdays as she works, the baby will need a settling in period and the childcare setting I use require a months' notice to terminate so I'm looking at possibly six weeks nursery fee for her.
I'm just feeling like I will be significantly impacted by this.

[BearOfEasttown]

I meant to quote - I agree with crimsonimp when they said this...


I'm not actually convinced that jury trials are a good thing at all. The past year has not given me much confidence in the ability of a significant proportion of the population to listen to and understand what is being said..

[BearOfEasttown]

@MrsTulipTattsyrup

I think it’s probably the case that people who want to do jury duty THAT badly probably aren’t doing it for altruistic reasons and probably aren’t best suited to the job.

Yeah, like my brother. He wants to do it, (and preferably a very long trial,) so he gets months and months off work.

Makes you wonder why certain people are so desperate to do jury service. To get out of work? Because they are economically inactive and bored and want something to do to fill their days???

I can't imagine a situation where anyone would LOVE to do jury service, unless they hate their job, or they are bored shitless at home with nothing to do, and they have absolutely NO commitments - not even pets.

[LighthouseRoad]

OP - regarding your mask question, I've done jury service recently and we did not have to wear a mask the entire time. We wore going into the building, through the security checks etc and in the common areas. We did not have to wear in our juror room because we were spaced out, but did have to put on when walking about e.g. walking past other jurors to go to the loo (one way systems were in place, its quite well organised). We had to wear again walking to and from the court room but inside the court room the judge said it was optional and most people did not wear inside the court room itself and again you are quite well spaced out.

[TeaSoakedDisasterMagnet]

@RealhousewifeofStoke you clearly have no idea how farming works, or how tight money is in farming. Do you think they’re all rich aristocrats running round in tweed?

OP I’d ask again to defer, citing the importance of the harvest and not being able to find suitable childcare.

[3luckystars]

It’s probably totally different where I am living but when I went for Jury service it was one day. Hundreds of people were called to select a jury from on that day.

If you were selected for the jury, the judge called you up and asked is there any reason you could not do it. Loads of people had excuses and just got dismissed at this stage. Most people said they knew the person, lived near them, or made up some other issue.

So that was just one day of an inconvenience. Your post sounds like you think it could go on for ages?

Sorry if I misunderstood that.

[lillylemons]

I dont know if things have changed but my husband was able to claim back the childcare when he did jury service.

[BearOfEasttown]

@3luckystars

It’s probably totally different where I am living but when I went for Jury service it was one day. Hundreds of people were called to select a jury from on that day.

If you were selected for the jury, the judge called you up and asked is there any reason you could not do it. Loads of people had excuses and just got dismissed at this stage. Most people said they knew the person, lived near them, or made up some other issue.

So that was just one day of an inconvenience. Your post sounds like you think it could go on for ages?

Sorry if I misunderstood that.

This. ^ @sulkingaboutjuryduty Seriously, just lie. Say you are still breastfeeding.

[2bazookas]

I had 4 under 6 , husband worked extreme shifts, no family in this country. The court accepted that as a reason to excuse me from jury duty.

The other time I was excused duty, was because it was not possible to reach the court by 10 am (as required) dues to ferry timetables.
The court official wrote back tosay "Sorry, your address should have warned us, islanders are normally excused and I'll make sure you aren't asked again.".

Don't ask to defer, ask to be excused. A short polite letter with a reasonable excuse, is all it takes.

[Catscrat]

I got called up earlier this year (I started a thread on here too to ask for advice!) I asked to be excused because of breastfeeding my baby- which was rejected. I called up and they allowed me to defer. The lady I spoke to told me you are allowed to defer for up to a year.
I deferred for a year, however by that point not only will my 1 year old will not be in nursery, it’s in the school holidays so I will also have my older child to consider. It’s a real pain, and it seems to be quite inconsistent with people being excused/ not excused for the same reasons.

[YellowFish12]

I'm not actually convinced that jury trials are a good thing at all. The past year has not given me much confidence in the ability of a significant proportion of the population to listen to and understand what is being said

I’ve done Jury duty.

I did two trials with two different jury member groups.

Both groups were very similar in the mix of abilities and the mix of levels of ‘giving a shit’. I’m not convinced that the ‘average joe’ has the cognitive ability to handle the information you get during trials and to apply the required critical thinking. Let alone people of less than average intelligence.

I’m really not convinced that juries get to the right answer. If I hadn’t been on the first one the idiot women who “didn’t believe in DNA and felt sorry for him” would have fucked things up.

I’m the second trial there were actually another couple of people who were quite ‘on it’ but there was one man who said openly he didn’t give a shit and would vote whichever way to get things finished quicker.

I did have an interesting two weeks and talked to some quite interesting people from the local community, so that was nice.

Nearly got put on a trial estimated to be 13 weeks but I had work travel booked so didn’t have to do that.

There is also a massive issue with people being left out of pocket (self employed etc) and the motivated people knowing how to get out. This doesn’t leave you with the best pool!

The 13 week trial was going to be for a fraud case. How many normal people are really up to understanding the intricacies of a complex fraud case and keeping that information in their mind for 13 weeks?!

I also found jury duty incredibly tiring. I was thinking ‘wahay it’s going to be mega, finish at 4 every day, what a laugh’ but it’s actually really intense to concentrate like that all day, plus the emotional toil of having someone’s future in your hands. and I found it much more tiring than much longer days at work.

[Dagnabit]

@RealhousewifeofStoke - your comments are frankly ridiculous! Grilling the OP about the farm, just so you can have a pop. You clearly have no clue so do yourself a favour and stop commenting.

OP, I would think the courts refuse a lot of deferrals first time round to weed out the chancers but I would try again because you clearly have a better reason than most.

[countingto10]

A medical condition that means constant interruptions of the court process are another excuse.

My DH was called up a few weeks ago, started panicking big time about as he is his business which has been a nightmare through the pandemic so he’s already incredibly stressed etc. A bit of Googling and we discovered his medical conditions exempted him - he has a bladder condition which means frequent trips to the loo etc and menieres which can come on suddenly and dramatically. He has been excused.

[Sometimesfraught82]

In your situation I would do whatever it took to get out of it.

Including blatantly lying

[Egeegogxmv]

I said I had IBS, I made a point of using the words 'urgency' and 'frequency' and they let me off 🙂

[3luckystars]

They should really bus law students/ trainee solicitors / people that want to be on a jury in from other counties to be on juries.

Nobody wants to do it, especially where I live anyway as everyone knows each other.

[Shortbreadbrokemytooth]

Phone them again in another few weeks to say that you still have no childcare available and your DH is still a farmer dealing with the usual annual August harvest. If they won’t excuse you, just turn up with the children!

[extravirginoliveoil]

@RealhousewifeofStoke

4,000 acres. What’s the farms annual turnover?
Am sure you could stretch to paying a family friend/niece/nephew/neighbour/childcare student/teaching student to help you out with childcare and making lunches or running with parts.

It’s your civic duty. And you’ve clearly never been in the position of being the victim, or family of the victim of a crime requiring a jury trial. As I hope you never are.
But your talk around claiming for childcare, given your family circumstances are beyond ridiculous.
Good luck and I have no doubt you’ll get out of it.

WTF have I just read.

Have you actually read the OPs posts.

[Sometimesfraught82]

@3luckystars

They should really bus law students/ trainee solicitors / people that want to be on a jury in from other counties to be on juries.

Nobody wants to do it, especially where I live anyway as everyone knows each other.

Absolutely not.

Will lead to an almost exclusively middle class, highly educated and overwhelmingly white jury.

[3luckystars]

That’s what they are here anyway though. Sorry you are right that was a stupid suggestion.

[billy1966]

OP,
I would simply arrive into court with both children. End of.

I fully support jury duty but I think it is absolutely ridiculous if it clashes with young children.

Believe me it will work.
Do not stress yourself.
Contact the court repeat that you have genuine childcare issues and if they insist you will bring your children to court on the 16th.
That should sort it.
Utterly ridiculous IMO that you should be lumped with this.

[sulkingaboutjuryduty]

@RealhousewifeofStoke why shouldn't I claim 30hours childcare? I work and I require childcare, I don't understand why you've taken issue with this at all? Not that it's relevant to my post at all.

We are a family farm, asset rich but farming margins are incredibly tight. As an industry we buy things at retail, sell things at wholesale and pay haulage both ways.

I don't want to call in sick or expect to be excused indefinitely, what I would like is to defer to a time of year when my husband is around to sort out the childcare, that's literally it?

[BearOfEasttown]

@Shortbreadbrokemytooth

Phone them again in another few weeks to say that you still have no childcare available and your DH is still a farmer dealing with the usual annual August harvest. If they won’t excuse you, just turn up with the children!

I would defo lie and say I was breastfeeding. If they're not content with that, just don't go.

[Sometimesfraught82]

@3luckystars

That’s what they are here anyway though. Sorry you are right that was a stupid suggestion.

But jury service selection is entirely random.
So if the jury service in your area is as above, then that is representative of the area, and nothing can be done about that!

[Sometimesfraught82]

[quote sulkingaboutjuryduty]@RealhousewifeofStoke why shouldn't I claim 30hours childcare? I work and I require childcare, I don't understand why you've taken issue with this at all? Not that it's relevant to my post at all.

We are a family farm, asset rich but farming margins are incredibly tight. As an industry we buy things at retail, sell things at wholesale and pay haulage both ways.

I don't want to call in sick or expect to be excused indefinitely, what I would like is to defer to a time of year when my husband is around to sort out the childcare, that's literally it? [/quote]
So not justify
Do not engage with her

[Sometimesfraught82]

Do not justify

I meant to say

You have nothing to justify