Some Utah judges and domestic relations commissioners instruct lawyers to hold their evidentiary objections until opposing counsel finishes presenting. One commissioner explained that objections during proffer were unnecessary because the commissioner knew the rules of evidence as well as the lawyers did, if not better.
That misses the point. An objection is not an accusation that the court does not know the law. It asks the court to apply the law to a particular problem before that problem gets worse.
Knowing the Rules Is Not Knowing the Dispute
In a proffer hearing, counsel describes what a witness would say instead of eliciting that testimony from the witness. This can shorten a hearing. It does not supply missing personal knowledge, establish a document’s authenticity, or make otherwise inadmissible hearsay admissible.
Utah Rule of Civil Procedure 101(b)(1) requires admissible supporting evidence, and subsection (j)(1) requires foundation for exhibits. Utah Rule of Evidence 103(a) generally requires a timely, specific objection to preserve an evidentiary error. “I know the rules” performs none of those functions.
The commissioner’s rationale confuses knowing the rules with knowing the dispute. A judicial officer may understand the personal-knowledge requirement perfectly without knowing that the person whose account counsel is presenting never witnessed the event. An objection identifies a defect that legal expertise alone cannot reveal.
Nor does agreeing to proceed by proffer surrender objections to admissibility. Krajeski v. Krajeski, 2025 UT App 19, ¶ 47 n.8, expressly recognizes that a party may agree that a witness would give the described testimony while objecting to whether the court may consider it. Accepting the format does not mean accepting everything presented through it.
The Problem Grows While Counsel Waits
Consider a hypothetical statement in a child custody dispute: “The child’s therapist told my client that the other parent is dangerous.”
An immediate objection permits the court to examine the source, purpose, foundation, and any claimed hearsay exception. Counsel may also need to explain that the purported opinion has been materially mischaracterized—or that the therapist denies expressing it. Knowing evidence law does not tell the court which of those problems exists.
Now require counsel to wait. The presenting lawyer elaborates on the accusation, connects it to other alleged behavior, and invokes it to justify supervised parent-time. By the time objections are allowed, the challenged assertion has become the premise for an entire argument.
The delay has changed the court’s task. It could have addressed the problem at its introduction. Now it must disentangle the presentation from an assertion that may never have belonged in it.
Judicial Experience Does Not Confer Selective Amnesia
Even the most honest and conscientious jurist cannot guarantee that inadmissible information, once heard, will have no influence on the decision. Sincerely intending to disregard an accusation does not establish that it has stopped shaping which explanations seem plausible or how other evidence is interpreted.
This is part of the preventive purpose of motions in limine: resolve admissibility before exposure creates harm that exclusion afterward may not adequately remedy. We do not display potentially inflammatory murder-scene photographs to a jury and only then ask whether the jury should have seen them.
When the judge also serves as factfinder, some exposure to challenged material is unavoidable. But unavoidable exposure does not justify additional, avoidable exposure. Hearing enough to recognize a potential defect is different from hearing an extended narrative built upon it.
If judicial expertise reliably eliminated the consequences, why stop at proffer hearings? Save every objection until the end of every bench trial. Let counsel present everything, then trust the judge to sort it out afterward. Imagine the efficiency. Then explain why we bothered with timely objections in the first place.
Some Interruptions Are Necessary
An objection interrupts because continuing may compound the problem. Treating the interruption itself as the defect confuses an uninterrupted hearing with a properly conducted one.
Utah Rule of Evidence 611(a) identifies both determining the truth and avoiding wasted time as purposes of judicial control over evidence. Saving time does not exhaust the court’s responsibility. A short interruption that prevents reliance on improper material serves the proceeding.
“I’ll give it the weight it deserves” does not answer an admissibility objection, either. The objection asks whether the court may consider the assertion for the proposed purpose at all. Giving inadmissible material less weight still gives it weight.
And court-required silence cannot fairly become consent. A lawyer who obeys an instruction to wait has conceded nothing. Even declining to challenge admissibility is different from agreeing that an assertion is true.
Hear the Objection When It Matters
Permit contemporaneous objections. Require concise grounds and ordinarily resolve the issue before counsel builds further upon the challenged material. Stop repetitive or argumentative interruptions. Where appropriate, allow a continuing objection to a clearly defined category so counsel need not repeat it. Reserve a ruling when additional context is genuinely necessary.
None of this requires an instantaneous ruling on every objection. It requires rejecting a blanket practice that unnecessarily postpones a useful safeguard. Families deserve decisions reached through procedures designed to reduce error, not procedures dependent on confidence that error can be mentally erased.
A court’s knowledge of the rules of evidence is a reason it can decide objections competently. It is not a reason counsel should be prevented from making them.
Utah Family Law, LC | divorceutah.com | 801-466-9277