The Better Chancery Practice Blog

You can skip over this post if you’ve been paying attention to this blog for any appreciable length of time.

For you newcomers and oblivious long-timers, you need to know and appreciate that proving many kinds of cases in chancery court is a matter of proving certain factors mandated from on high by our appellate courts. I’ve referred to it as “trial by checklist.”

If you don’t put on proof to support findings of fact by the chancellor, your case will fail, and you will have wasted your time, the court’s time, your client’s money. You will have lost your client’s case and embarrassed yourself personally, professionally, and, perhaps, financially.

I suggest you copy these checklists and have them handy at trial. Build your outline of the case around them. In your trial preparation design your discovery to make sure that you will have proof at trial to support findings on the factors applicable in your case. Subpoena the witnesses who will provide the proof you need. Present the evidence at trial that will support the judge’s findings.

If the judge fails to address the applicable factors in his or her findings of fact, file a timely R59 motion asking the judge to do that. But remember — and this is critically important — if you did not put the proof in the record at trial to support those findings, all the R59 motions in the world will not cure that defect.

Here is an updated list of links to the checklists I’ve posted:

Attorney’s fees.

Attorney’s fees in an estate.

Adverse possession.

Child custody.

Child Support.

Grandparent visitation.

Equitable distribution.

Income tax dependency exemption.

Modification of child support.

Periodic and rehabilitative alimony.

Lump sum alimony.

Separate maintenance.

And here are two checklists that will help you in probate matters:

Closing an estate.

Doing an accounting in a probate matter.