to leave it all to solicitor, family court?

[monsterradeliciosa]

I've had an application to family court that has caused me great distress. I dealt with all the papers myself up to recently when my legal aid came through and the solicitor took over. I drafted, redrafted, gathered evidence for, and agonised over my C1A with no help whatsoever.

Now it's time to submit a longer statement and solicitor has taken the reigns. It feels both relieving and anxiety inducing because it's so important I feel so strange relinquishing control to someone else. At the same time it nearly finished me off working with the C1A whilst being a mother and working full-time.

The solicitor is saying it doesn't matter if my statement is late, the court don't care, but it feels so wrong to me to miss court deadlines.

They haven't sent it to me and it was due today.

Should I carry on taking control or let them do their thing? On the one hand this cannot go wrong, everything must be put across properly and only I can really do that as I know the ins and outs of what happened. On the other I am drained to the point of mental and physical exhaustion.

I'm waiting for counselling, on anxiety medication, but this whole thing is about to finish me off.

Is my solicitor right, or do they just not give a crap?

Yes, I see. This has made things clearer along with other responses. thanks all.

so mine being late would probably trigger his solicitor to send his late, l

very very unlikely if he is pushing for contact

His solicitor could well raise fact that iii have missed deadlines and he believes to further delay the process and make it
more prolonged - which doesn’t have the children’s best interests as an priority

I certainly would raise it if I was his solicitor

He has not once yet even mentioned my child's welfare, not in his application, it was all about his desires.

He's doing this to upset me/control me, and this is what I said to cafcass when they asked whether I thought this.

It baffles me that his solicitor didn't even say 'let's word this application from the child's perspective; child would benefit from me... nope, just 'I want this so give it to me.'

Thing is I've already made it clear I do not think contact is in my child's best interests as she does not want to see this person and says that he hurt her a few times.

As your solicitor is on legal aid - he may have an overload of work and is happy to ''postpone'' your case.

Legal aid pays very badly - less than a private client. They won't intentionally give you a dud, but not everyone is as good as everyone else. You are right not to get into an adversarial situation with them, but be politely persistent. Phone rather than email if you can.

Your solicitor works for you, so they should act on your instructions. This means that you are quite within your rights to request they send you all copy paperwork and submit papers to court on time.

Ring up and be charming and nice. Do the thing where you explicitly state repeatedly how little of this you understand and how anxious it makes you and ask for clarification until you get it. Have a list of questions written down and ask them all. Say thank you a lot. Be the client they want to talk to and to do their best for. May not work, some people are just not as helpful as others, but it the best technique ime. Good luck.

Phone, so they have to talk to you there and then.
Follow up with an email, so you have a record, e.g. "just to confirm our call this morning, it was agreed xx, you will take xxx action by xxx date..." etc.

The court will care if you submit it late and the judge will tell you off for it.

They don't, as long as there is a valid reason why it was late and as long as the court was informed.

The fact that the OP is busy and tired though wouldn’t be regarded as a valid reason

@Lovelyveg82 I thought it was the solicitor who filed it late? Solicitor will have written to the court.

OP will reply to your PM shortly.

Thanks so much all

yes solicitor has not sent me the draft

my legal aid only just came through so that’s the main reason

my mental state has been affected by all this but it’s a fine line between getting this recognised and then getting that turned against me I feel

I’m not busy or tired enough to let this deadline slide at all
i wish I was busy or tired enough to not think about this as much as I do

Ok, so I have self repped all the way through my family court, up until the last hearing where I used a Barrister.
My Barrister was immediately late finishing my statement. He sent an email with it apologising for the delay as he had been ill and it made no difference.
As long as you are not weeks late it is fine.

I must say that even with a Solicitor you can still keep control of this case. Even with the Barrister I wrote my position statement and I made adjustments to the witness statement. I take advice, but I’m also very clear of the points I want made. It’s a relief to hand it over, but you know your case best. Solicitors/Barristers do not care in the way you do. They want to win, but ultimately it’s not their children. Even at my last heating I wanted to jump up and say things because I felt he was missing bits out that I wouldn’t have done.

Anyway, you need to keep on at them. My Barrister (Direct Access) is absolutely appalling at replying etc and I really had to keep on.

So what would your valid reason have been?

@Bizzieizz

it made no difference becAuse your barrister not being present due to I’ll health is a valid reason

My solicitor has not sent me the draft yet
I will call them tomorrow and don’t want to miss the deadline

It’s my solicitor filing, not me
i filed my forms on time before my legal aid was sorted

All this is abuse and I’m being terrorised via this process

I’ve been the verge of suicide

im only here to protect my child

If you were granted legal aid recently it will have impacted on how much time the solicitor had to do your statement. She will have probably explained this to the court or will do when filing. Does the other side have legal representation? If so, she’s probably spoken to them and explained that she’s relatively recently instructed so the statement will be a bit late. If the hearing isn’t until April, a delay of a few days won’t make the slightest difference to the listing. The judge won’t look at the statements until the day before or day of the next hearing, so as long as the other side can file their documents in response, then it’ll be absolutely fine.

There is no difference in quality of work or representation regardless of legal aid or private fees, in my experience.

By all means chase your solicitor - that’s entirely your right, but bear in mind that they will already have a full caseload and they can’t just drop everything else to prioritise your case just because legal aid came through close to the deadline for your statement.

My statement was late because my Barrister was ill.
I was pointing out that a late statement is not the end of the world nor will it cause huge delays.
My Barrister was at court with me at my hearing.

Your late statement was due to a very valid reason!

I can't believe your solicitor said that, it makes me question their abilities and professionalism. I wouldnt be impressed with that. Deadlines are expected to be stuck to. That said my ex continually missed deadlines and absolutely nothing come of it, he was never once reprimanded in any way on not obeying an order of the court, all it did was prolong the whole process.

I see, so it's late due to awaiting legal aid. In that case it's perfectly acceptable. This will be notified to the court, they won't bat an eye!