Professionalism means treating the other party with courtesy and respect. I understand that you may not consider yourself a professional if you didn’t go to law school and you’re not a lawyer and you’re representing yourself. But in these cases you can still act with professionalism even if you don’t consider yourself a professional.
It’s really important because as you proceed through your custody case and as you gear up to go to trial, chances are the emails and text messages that you have exchanged with the other party are going to end up as exhibits. So if you are discourteous and rude and disrespectful, then the judge is going to see that and those are going to be strikes against you.
Always maintain an air of professionalism. I was surprised in one of my recent cases where I had sent a letter to another attorney asking her to take action on some things her client was doing that were in violation of a preliminary injunction. I gave the...