This is the fourth in a series counting down 10 common-sense practice tips to improve your chancery court trial performance. If you’re a long-time reader of this blog, some of these will be familiar. That’s okay. They bear repeating because they are inside tips on how to impress your chancellor, or at least how to present your case in a way that will help her or him decide in your favor.

TOP TEN TIP #7 …

Put on proof of jurisdiction.

Your pleadings are not proof. It’s your job to establish jurisdiction. Yes, it’s your job, not the judge’s. Yet, I have had to do it on more than one occasion for the attorney. Why would I do that? because it beats the heck out of having to retry the case on remand for lack of jurisdiction the first go-round.

Jurisdiction is vital. Without it the court can not proceed. So …

• If you are trying a divorce, you have to ask your witness about residence in the state of Mississippi for the requisite time, and you have to establish venue (which is jurisdictional in a divorce), and, of course, that there was a marriage in the first place a marriage.
• If you are trying a modification, you have to establish that the court has continuing jurisdiction by virtue of a prior judgment; and ditto for a contempt action.
• If you are trying a contempt, you have to introduce the judgment of which you claim the defendant is in contempt.
• If you are trying a statutorily-created action, such as grandparent visitation or partition, what are the facts that confer jurisdiction on this particular court?
• If you are trying a property dispute, where on this green earth is the property located?

The pleadings are not evidence in chancery court. Don’t think just because it’s in the pleadings that it is proven. The pleadings are your template for what must be proven through competent evidence at trial. If you want the trial judge and possibly the appellate court to consider it, you must put it into the record at trial.

I suggest you always put on proof of venue because some statutes, like the divorce statutes, confer jurisdiction through venue. In other words, if a statute designates venue, and you file in the wrong venue, the court has no jurisdiction and you will be wasting time, effort and the judge’s patience.

Tagged: trial practice