Family Trial Law
This section covers Family Trial Law, the domain in which the NBTA family trial exam tests both substantive family law and the trial skills needed to prove a family case. Expect questions on jurisdiction, custody, support, property, evidence, ethics, and courtroom procedure, with an emphasis on applying rules to fact patterns rather than reciting statutes.
Core rules and concepts
- Subject-matter jurisdiction: custody is governed by the UCCJEA; initial jurisdiction generally rests in the child's home state, with emergency and modification exceptions.
- Custody: the court applies the best-interests standard, weighing statutory factors such as stability, caretaking, each parent's involvement, the child's needs, and domestic violence.
- Support: guideline awards are presumptive; rebuttal requires admissible evidence and statutory deviation factors, and modification requires a substantial change in circumstances.
- Property: characterize assets as marital/community or separate, value them, and distribute under equitable-distribution or community-property rules; trace separate funds.
- Evidence: apply the Federal Rules of Evidence or state analog; authenticate texts and emails, satisfy hearsay exceptions such as business records or excited utterance, and protect attorney-client and psychotherapist privilege.
Worked example
Mother petitions to relocate 300 miles with the child; Father objects. Under the relocation statute, Mother must show a good-faith reason and that relocation serves the child's best interests. She offers a job offer, a lease, school records, and testimony about the child's routine. Father offers texts in which Mother says she wants to "get away" from him. The texts are relevant to motive but must be authenticated; if offered for their truth, they also require a hearsay exception. The court weighs stability, each parent's involvement, and the child's needs, not Mother's convenience alone. Support is recalculated using updated incomes and parenting time; any deviation must be justified under the statute.
Traps that cost marks
- Equating best interests with parental fault or moral fitness.
- Treating a support guideline as mandatory without checking rebuttal or deviation.
- Confusing UCCJEA home-state, emergency, and modification jurisdiction.
- Offering privileged communications or unauthenticated digital evidence.
- Mixing separate and marital property without tracing.
- Asserting a child's preference without satisfying the statutory age or factor requirements.