How to Adjourn Your BC Family Law Trial or Hearings

Adjourning your family law trial in BC means delaying the hearing for a few months or perhaps a year or more. It means that your issues, conflict and differences will not be resolved by a judge until a later date. Family law trials are usually 5 to 10 days in length and court time is limited. Therefore, most judges do not like adjourning trials, specially when custody is involved. But sometimes, there are good reasons for adjourning trial.

Let’s look at some reasons to adjourn your family law trial:

Reasons and Chances of Success of Adjourning your Family Law trial

• Not having money to pay your lawyer: if you do not have enough money to pay your lawyer to represent you during trial, you need to explain to the judge why it is important to have a lawyer and how long you need to afford one. In most situations, the judge will not accept this as a good excuse to adjourn trial. Unless your spouse has a powerful lawyer and you will be seriously harmed by not having a lawyer. But you need to give the judge a realistic schedule. So don’t say you don’t know when you can afford a lawyer, or that you need 2 years to save enough money. Show the judge your plan to make sure you have enough money within a reasonable amount of time to hire a lawyer.

• Financial Disclosure or Document Disclosure Not Available: this is a good reason to adjourn trial but only in very specific circumstances. So for example you have already (before trial) ordered large financial disclosure but the bank or another entity has not been able to produce very important disclosure. Or you have ordered an expert report and it is not ready in time for trial. If you do have an expert report but you need to dispute it and it wasn’t made available 84 days before trial, you can ask to adjourn trial. It is hard to explain every example of financial disclosure and the chances of adjourning trial because of it. It is always best to at least consult with a BC family lawyer to know your chances of success in adjourning a family law trial. Because all family law cases are different from one another and you may need strategy – that’s something a google article can’t give you.

• Serious Illness – Mental or Physical: saying you are feeling unwell is not enough. During litigation and family law trials, no one feels good. It is filled with stress and anxiety and people generally hate being a part of it. That is why it is important to get it over and done with. Unless you are gravely ill and can back that up with multiple doctor letters and notes, forget about trying to adjourn it due to feeling unwell. Trust me, not one more second should be wasted anticipating a fight. The fight needs to end whether you will win or lose. And if you lose you will recover because we are made to recover. But you will never get back the time you worried and lost sleep over anticipated conflict that is often only getting worse.

• Being out of Town: not a good reason to adjourn trial at all. If you have work commitments that happen to happen during your trial, you won’t get sympathy from anyone. Unless the work meeting is a ‘make it or break it’ commitment that can’t be missed otherwise you will lose your job. And please have a letter from your employer to back that up otherwise you won’t be able to adjourn trial.

• Adjourning Trial to Go to Mediation: very good reason to adjourn trial. Judges love the thought of settlement and mediation. No one likes to see people fighting in court if they can resolve their conflict between themselves. And have control over the results. So if you want to adjourn trial in order to settle or mediate your case, the judge will often grant the adjournment but it is always better if your spouse also agrees to adjourn trial.

How to Adjourn Your Family Law Trial

1. Before the trial starts, set down a Notice of Application and ask the judge to adjourn the trial. The Application to adjourn trial can happen anytime prior to during trial. But the earlier your bring your adjournment application, the better. If you bring your application is on the first day or during your trial, you chances of success will be slim to none. But if you apply well in advance and show good reasons for the adjournment you will likely win.
2. Attach an Affidavit to your Notice of Application and explain the reason for adjournment in detail. Attach all documents, letters and evidence that clear show why the trial should be adjourned.
3. If the adjournment of trial is granted, you need to book a new date for trial with BC Supreme Court Scheduling. Then you will need to file a trial notice and pay $200 for booking a new trial.

To learn more about how to adjourn your BC family law trial, contact our award-winning family lawyers. They will teach you how to best strategize the adjournment.