Hope someone can assist here.
We have spent 3 years defending a ridiculous parenting application in family court. The applicant managed, through his terrible behaviour, to have a final ruling. At trial of nil contact, with sole responsibility given to the mother (the respondent), as the applicant demonstrated through the many interim rulings and various forms of reporting, mediation, counselling and other arrangements, that he is incapable of co-parenting, is vexatious toward the mother, and above all, did not care what impact he had on the child.
So we had an absolutely definitive win and the judge issued her reasoning and final ruling in only 4 days! She provided 100+ statements of reasoning which covered every plausible avenue of appeal that a reasonable person would consider. However, it came as no surprise to us that he has appealed and his numerous pages of ranting are all around the Judge 'failing to' this and 'failed to' that. Anyway, we are done with it and have discharged our lawyer having already sunk $150K into this where as he is self representing.
Our question: the hearing of his application with the registrar is set for a date in the next few days. We are absolutely certain that it will not be accepted, however, we are expected to attend the court either by phone or in person. The respondent is committed to other appointments and is unable to attend, cannot excuse herself to be on the phone and does not have a legal representative.
Two questions;
1: If we ignore this and simply not appear on the day, will there be a consequence?
2: Can I (her partner) appear via telephone as it allowed and introduce myself as representing the respondent, despite not being a legal representative?
Hope someone can assist here. It was bad enough that he was allowed to cross examine her for several hours, asking the most ridiculous and inappropriate questions (unfortunately a necessity for Her Honour to make an observed ruling), but to then expect us to listen to his whining and complaining again is simply not going to happen.
We have spent 3 years defending a ridiculous parenting application in family court. The applicant managed, through his terrible behaviour, to have a final ruling. At trial of nil contact, with sole responsibility given to the mother (the respondent), as the applicant demonstrated through the many interim rulings and various forms of reporting, mediation, counselling and other arrangements, that he is incapable of co-parenting, is vexatious toward the mother, and above all, did not care what impact he had on the child.
So we had an absolutely definitive win and the judge issued her reasoning and final ruling in only 4 days! She provided 100+ statements of reasoning which covered every plausible avenue of appeal that a reasonable person would consider. However, it came as no surprise to us that he has appealed and his numerous pages of ranting are all around the Judge 'failing to' this and 'failed to' that. Anyway, we are done with it and have discharged our lawyer having already sunk $150K into this where as he is self representing.
Our question: the hearing of his application with the registrar is set for a date in the next few days. We are absolutely certain that it will not be accepted, however, we are expected to attend the court either by phone or in person. The respondent is committed to other appointments and is unable to attend, cannot excuse herself to be on the phone and does not have a legal representative.
Two questions;
1: If we ignore this and simply not appear on the day, will there be a consequence?
2: Can I (her partner) appear via telephone as it allowed and introduce myself as representing the respondent, despite not being a legal representative?
Hope someone can assist here. It was bad enough that he was allowed to cross examine her for several hours, asking the most ridiculous and inappropriate questions (unfortunately a necessity for Her Honour to make an observed ruling), but to then expect us to listen to his whining and complaining again is simply not going to happen.
