california family-law
Does a judge have to give an opportunity for cross examination in California Family Law?
<p>We have a new judge in our local Family court. The former judge would always ask the parties whether they would like to ask the witnesses questions and make sure they were done before moving on.
At a recent hearing with the new judge, I was surprised that we were not given an opportunity to engage in cross examination and the judge gave their ruling immediately after the other party finished their testimony.
Would this be considered an irregularity in the proceedings?</p>

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<p>Would this be considered an irregularity in the proceedings?</p>
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<p>Probably. The right to cross-examine is a basic legal right of parties in evidentiary hearings.</p>
<p>If you made a timely objection to the denial of a right to cross-examination and you made an offer of proof about what the cross-examination might reveal (i.e. a statement to the court in which you explain what you think the cross-examination would show), and the cross-examination question and its answer did not beyond a reasonable doubt have no impact on the outcome, then you have preserved a valid appealable objection. If your appeal prevailed, the final order in the case based upon the evidence from that hearing might be vacated and the appellate court might remand the case for a new trial before the same judge.</p>
<p>A ruling in the middle of an evidentiary hearing, however, is an &quot;interlocutory order&quot; that unlike a &quot;final order&quot; usually can't be immediately appealed. Only when the court enters an appealable order based upon the evidence secured in the evidentiary hearing can the court's denial of your right to cross-examine the witness be appealed to a higher court, and then, only if the outcome on the order depended upon the evidence that you were not allowed to develop with cross-examination in some way.</p>
<p>A consistent denial of litigants' rights to cross-examination in the face of objections by litigants to that practice could, in rare cases, also be the basis for an &quot;interlocutory appeal&quot; before an order is entered, or a grievance against the judge (although the latter route is successful only extremely rarely and doesn't benefit you as a litigant at all).</p>
<p>For example, if a judge's standing orders provided that cross-examination is not allowed for litigants in family law proceedings, this would probably be something that could be raised with an appellate court in an interlocutory appeal.</p>

<p>Standing Orders for specific judges departments (courtrooms) are generally, e.g. in SF in 2009, available in a binder at one of the clerks (SF was in the documents review room, beyond the main clerks windows on the 1st floor, with different hours from the clerk of the 4th floor Unified Family Court area, where it also could be found, albeit only 2 of the 8 times I needed to check. To be safe, I'd ask any unknown-before-hearing judicial officers who may be there for only a few days (and will often be unelected private attorney substitutes; who may or may not have joined the public sector after a term or more as a &quot;real&quot; judge) when you see them:</p>
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<p>I haven't seen you here before. Are there any personal standing orders filed that I may have missed?</p>
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<p>...probably never make a difference, but minimal noticeably-nonzero peace of mind is all we get.</p>
