People seeking to be divorced or to resolve other problems in the Family Law Division of the Maricopa County Superior Court in the State of Arizona can find themselves trapped in a system that is not well suited to meet their needs. Despite the best efforts of well-intentioned judicial officers and administrators the fundamental problem is that there are simply too many cases and insufficient resources. In 2013 the Family Law Division was responsible for more than 12,000 active pending cases. There were close to 56,000 new family law court filings in 2013 alone! There are only 26 judges in the Family Law Division who presided over 740 motions and events and 352 hearings per day. As you can see the numbers are overwhelming. Inevitably, the only way for these hard working judicial officers to manage this staggering case load has been to only permit the parties a very short time to present their crucial information in the courtroom.

Temporary Orders -

During the transition period between the filing of your divorce proceeding and the conclusion of it there needs to be a structure put into place so that, for example, separate residences can be maintained, funds are available to both parties to meet their necessary expenses, debts are kept current and appropriate access to the children is facilitated. This is accomplished by obtaining “temporary orders”. These are court orders that remain in effect while the divorce action is pending. In complex cases these orders are critical as they could be in effect for well over a year. Temporary orders can address exclusive use and possession of a home, control of funds in accounts, legal decision making (custody), parenting time, spousal maintenance (alimony), the payment of debts, expenses and attorney fees as well as child support. Even though these orders might be of vital importance to you, judges routinely allow only 45 minutes for temporary orders hearings (trial). Those 45 minutes are split equally between the two parties giving them each only 22 minutes to present all of the evidence that each of them may have on all of these subjects and to refute the evidence presented by the other party. The time is strictly kept. As you can imagine, in any case where there are substantial issues to address it is impossible to provide the court with all of the relevant and material information within those 22 minutes.