In this episode, we’re discussing the phases of litigation. We’re going to walk you through your trust contest case from beginning to end. One of the things that you need to understand is the different phases that every legal case takes when it works through our judicial process.
Six Phases of Your Trust Contest Lawsuit
The Pleadings Phase
You have to put together your pleadings and file them with the court and properly serve it to all the necessary parties. That’s the pleading phase.
The Written Discovery Phase
After you get past that, then you have written discovery. That’s where you’re asking for information, documents, questions, admissions either from the opposing party or you’re trying to seek documents from third-party witnesses. That’s the discovery phase and we’ll go through that and it’s actually quite time-consuming to do written discovery and there’s a lot that goes into written discovery trying to get the relevant evidence is very important.
The Deposition Phase
The next phase is depositions. Also a very important phase of your case. You have to depose relevant witnesses. For example, in trust contest cases, you almost always are deposing the drafting attorney who drafted this trust or trust amendment. What did they think, what did they see, what did they know. The treating physician, so if the elder had a doctor. What type of diagnosis and prognosis did that doctor document in the medical file. There are also lay witnesses, so there are people who were around like friends, relatives, neighbors and then there’s the opposing party. There are a lot of people who potentially could be deposed in your case and you have to really think about who do you want to depose, in what order and then what questions do you want to ask them. When it comes to depositions, you only have one shot. You get one deposition per witness by and large and that’s it so you got to be ready.
The Settlement Phase
Usually, somewhere along the line during the deposition phase, you get to the next phase which is the settlement. A vast majority of cases are going to settle before they go to trial. The settlement phase consists of two different possibilities usually. Most cases are going to go to mediation and we’ll talk about what mediation is and how it works. You might go to a mandatory settlement conference which is a little different procedure but chances are your case is going through one of those settlement procedures before you get to trial.
The Pretrial/Expert Witness Phase
The next phase is what we call pretrial and it’s also the expert phase. This is the time when settlement didn’t work, the case is going to proceed to trial and you have started getting ready for trial. There’s a lot that goes into pretrial work and this is the time typically you would depose any expert witnesses and you can bet that your trust contest case is going to have expert witnesses. At a minimum, you’re going to need a medical expert and that’s usually true in just about every trust contest case. The pretrial/expert phase is one of the most important phases of your case heading in the trial.
The Trial Phase
The last phase is trial. Your case if it doesn’t settle will go to a trial in front of a judge and it could take anywhere from several days to several weeks to several months. It is depending on the judge’s availability, the availability of witnesses and any number of other factors that go into your case.
Those are the phases of your lawsuit just as an introduction and those are the phases that we’re going to cover as we continue down this road of the big challenge.
