Desperately need advice. How to I cut down my statement?

[LILLYSHILLINGS]

I've submitted a first statement to family court outlining the awful domestic abuse I suffered. It's regarding a child arrangements order. I've really struggled with it but it's double the length I was allowed, and the court have asked me to half it. I know. Stupid me. It's so hard trying to work out which abuse to include and which not to.

I have to cut it in half. How do I do this without minimising the abuse I suffered? It says that 1.5 spacing and 12 font are 'preferable' - does that mean they are necessary?

I hate being LiP

How long is your statement? Perhaps cut out the detail rather than the facts?

Use bullet points.

I think this kind of rigid adherence to petty rules is insane. A statement is meant to replace evidence in chief. Now you'll have to stand up and give evidence in chief and say that you wish to elaborate on what is contained in your witness statement, and then spend minutes or hours setting out what was once in your statement.

Stick with the guidelines on font and spacing because it’s important to make a good impression with the judge.

Make a list of the points you need to make / facts you need to include. Tick them off in your statement. Then highlight any paragraphs or sentences that fall outside your list of essential points. Can you remove those portions?

Then read your statement carefully to remove unnecessary words and phrases. Short, simple sentences can be more powerful and will save space.

Keep going over your statement to cut it down. You’ll be surprised at how much you can remove yet still keep your central meaning.

It’s also ok to write in the statement that it does not include all examples / events / facts but instead gives an overview, because you are mindful of the length limit.

Trim out any unnecessary extra words (be really brutal).
Consider using less words to make your point eg instead of saying 'on the 23rd dec 2018 Joe Bloggs attended my house and kicked at my door whilst shouting abuse through my letterbox' you could write '23.12.18 - JB verbally abusive whilst kicking my door'

Also after a name of something you will write regularly you can write the initials in brackets then only use the initial from that point onwards.

Also if there were instances of in effect the same forms of abuse (such as 10 instances of verbal abuse on phone, 5 of driving by your home being intimidating) then you could summarise them into categories and list the dates of each one so you can trim the words that way, e.g:
10 x verbal abuse on telephone on... Then list the dates in short format as I've put above. Then save your word count for the significant behaviours you want to detail

Be as factual and as short as you can. It will be more useful to the judge to say x incidents of assault ranging from (most minor incident) to (most major incident). Charged for assault y number of times, convicted z number of times.

The aim of you witness statement is to help the judge apply the law. Figure out which legal tests you need to satisfy and provide the evidence to support it in an easy to read way.