Utah law already recognizes that divorce is a life-altering event. Under Utah Code § 81-4-105, parents must attend an orientation course because the state knows this process is emotionally volatile and legally complex.
But there is a massive hole in our system: We orient parents to the child custody and parent-time, but we don’t orient them to the courtroom.
When a case moves toward an evidentiary hearing or trial, we drop untrained, stressed individuals into a highly specialized environment and expect them to “perform.” The results are predictable: chaos, confusion, and a massive waste of judicial resources.
There is even more reason to educate all parties to divorce and other domestic relations disputes about evidentiary hearings and trials in their court cases.
Because what happens in an evidentiary hearing or trial is not intuitive. Most litigants have never participated in a formal evidentiary proceeding before. They do not understand:
- what evidence actually is;
- what “relevance” means;
- why hearsay rules exist;
- how exhibits are admitted;
- what “foundation” and “authentication” mean;
- why lawyers object;
- why the judge interrupts them;
- why some facts matter legally and others do not.
And because they do not understand the structure and purpose of the process, they naturally default to what ordinary human beings do during conflict: they vent, argue, moralize, tell long stories, repeat themselves, interrupt, dump piles of screenshots on the court, and assume that “telling the whole story” is the same thing as proving a legal claim.
It is not.
Evidentiary hearings and trials are not therapy. They are not a moral referendum, not a soapbox, not a free-form storytelling exercise. They are structured legal processes designed to answer specific disputed questions using admissible evidence, so that the court can make reliable findings, apply the law, and enter enforceable orders.
To be fair, it is not a court’s responsibility to prepare litigants for court. Judges are not supposed to act as legal coaches. But when the system sends procedurally untrained, emotionally overwhelmed people into highly structured evidentiary proceedings and gives them almost no explanation of how those proceedings actually work, the predictable result is confusion, inefficiency, frustration, and wasted time for everyone involved.
Judges and commissioners spend enormous amounts of time explaining basic procedure in real time:
- “Please ask a question.”
- “That is argument, not testimony.”
- “Do you have an exhibit?”
- “Who took this photograph?”
- “What is the relevance of this?”
- “Please stop interrupting.”
- “You cannot testify while examining the witness.”
This is not because litigants are stupid. It is because the process is specialized and unfamiliar.
Even many lawyers forget how unnatural courtroom procedure actually is to ordinary people.
Take authentication of evidence, for example. Most people think: “If this text message is real, why can’t the judge just read it?”
But the court’s concern is different:
“How do we know this is authentic?”
“Who created it?”
“Was it altered?”
“Is it complete?”
“Who took the screenshot?”
“Who can testify this is a fair and accurate copy?”
That is not common sense to most people. It is learned procedural knowledge.
The same is true for hearsay. Many litigants assume that if they heard something from someone they trust, the judge should simply accept it as true. But statements like “my child told me,” “the teacher said,” “his mother told me,” or “the therapist believes” often trigger hearsay problems.
Hearsay rules exist because courts generally prefer evidence that can be tested through questioning and cross-examination. The legal system is cautious about secondhand statements because they are often incomplete, misunderstood, exaggerated, or impossible to verify fairly.
And the digital evidence problem in modern family law litigation is getting worse, not better.
Courts are flooded with:
- disorganized screenshot dumps;
- cropped text chains;
- incomplete recordings;
- contextless social media posts;
- duplicated exhibits;
- mislabeled PDFs;
- giant volumes of irrelevant communications.
Judges are reluctant (even unwilling) to reconstruct timelines and context in real time during hearings.
The Solution: Procedural Literacy
A mandatory pre-hearing orientation course could help solve much of this.
Not by turning litigants into lawyers. That is not the goal. The objective is procedural literacy.
A short, mandatory pre-hearing course would demystify:
- what evidentiary hearings are for;
- what judges can and cannot consider;
- the burden of proof
- the difference between evidence and argument;
- how exhibits are admitted;
- how to organize and present evidence effectively and efficiently;
- basic courtroom procedure;
- remote hearing etiquette;
- what relevance means;
- why hearsay rules exist;
- how to testify effectively;
- how to question witnesses properly;
- why “more evidence” is not always “better evidence.”
The benefits would be significant and substantial:
- Hearings would likely become shorter, clearer, cheaper, and more focused.
- Litigants would better understand what the court is trying to accomplish.
- Judges could spend more time deciding cases and less time managing confusion.
- Attorneys would spend less client time explaining basic mechanics repeatedly.
- Self-represented litigants would participate more effectively.
- Court staff would deal with fewer frustrated and bewildered people.
And perhaps most importantly, litigants would better understand why courts make the decisions they make.
Right now, many people leave family court believing the system is arbitrary or incomprehensible. Often that perception arises not because the process was unfair, but because the process was never understood.
There is a difference between giving people access to a courtroom and giving them a meaningful opportunity to participate intelligently in the hearing or trial once they get there.
This proposal would not create a barrier to justice. If anything, it would improve access to justice by helping people understand the process before they are thrown into it. It would also likely make courts more efficient and effective by reducing procedural confusion, improving evidentiary presentation, and helping hearings stay focused on legally material issues.
Utah already recognizes that divorce and child custody disputes affect families deeply enough to justify mandatory orientation and education. It should also recognize that evidentiary hearings and trials are specialized procedural environments that ordinary people are not naturally equipped to navigate without guidance.
Fairness and Familiarity
Frankly, the entire domestic relations system would likely function better if litigants arrived at evidentiary hearings and trials with at least a basic understanding of what those proceedings are, what they are for, and how they work. So let’s build the course and pilot it. Who’s with me?
Utah Family Law, LC | divorceutah.com | 801-466-9277