A Los Angeles Attorney Sheds Light on the Importance of TalkingParents
Carina Reyna, Esq. is the Principal Attorney at Reyna Law Professional Corporation, located in Los Angeles, California. In January 2018, Ms. Reyna opened her own law firm that exclusively handles family law and criminal defense. She has over eight years of experience working in family law and dedicates roughly 95% of her time to cases involving custody, divorce, child support, and restraining orders.
- 4 min read
Benefits
Ms. Reyna initially learned about TalkingParents when it was ordered in one of her cases back in 2018. Since then, she’s been pushing for her family law clients to use it as much as possible.
“With TalkingParents, it’s so much easier and cleaner to submit the transcripts as exhibits as opposed to text messages and other miscellaneous communications. And, bottom line, I think it’s much more efficient at getting the point across.”
In Ms. Reyna’s experience, the court primarily utilizes TalkingParents to limit contact between parties.
“Especially when there is a high conflict divorce or the parties are not getting along in their child custody case, using this platform really helps narrow down the focus to just discussing the kids.”
Ms. Reyna has also seen great success with clients using TalkingParents in low conflict cases.
“Even if the parties get along just fine, I will always encourage them to use TalkingParents. I try to put my clients on TalkingParents as soon as possible for the sake of their kids. Even if they’re in agreement, it helps keep all their messages together. It also has the calendar function, the payment function, and the video call function. Basically, everything can be done in one app which makes it so easy to go back-and-forth and stay organized.”
Ms. Reyna has also seen many cases resolve outside of court because the parties were using TalkingParents.
“I just recently had a case where we were on day three of the trial, and I was trying to reach out to the other side’s attorney, but he’s very difficult to get a hold of,” she explains. “So, I asked my client if she could go on TalkingParents and see if her co-parent was interested in a settlement. I told my client that if her co-parent was willing, they should discuss the parameters for an agreement involving the child and see if they could come to a consensus. And they were actually able to talk through it and put everything on TalkingParents, which made it super easy for us to just go in and put it into a stipulation.”
Records
Ms. Reyna has seen cases take far less time because a TalkingParents Record was in play.
“It no longer becomes a “he said, she said” in court, which saves everyone so much time,” she says. “I encourage my clients to put everything on TalkingParents. Whether they’re communicating about a drop off or pick up, or they need to inform their co-parent that their child was scratched by the cat, whatever it may be, put it on TalkingParents. Because then it’s on a Record that’s court-admissible, and there’s no question about what happened, when. I just think it’s a really great way to document everything, so instead of trying to look for additional evidence, the court will accept our TalkingParents transcripts as proof of what occurred.”
Ms. Reyna says opposing counsel has objected to her use of a TalkingParents Record as evidence before, but it ultimately wasn’t an issue.
I have had opposing counsel try to claim that it’s hearsay, but it’s so easy for the court to just ask the other party, ‘Sir, or ma’am, did you write this? Is this your TalkingParents transcript? Was this the conversation you had?’ So, when attorneys try to object to the Record, it’s really just them grasping at things to get the court on their side. Which, when it comes to TalkingParents, that usually never happens.
Ms. Reyna says she’s also had objections where opposing counsel claims the TalkingParents transcripts are too lengthy.
“They basically try to say that the document is burdensome for the court to have to read through all the transcripts,” she explains. “But an easy solution to that is to just point out the pages we are referencing within the Record.”
Advice
Ms. Reyna’s biggest tip to other attorneys is to actually go into TalkingParents and check messages between parties.
“There are so many occasions where I go to court and say to the other attorney ‘Hey, did you see what they were talking about on such and such day and how they were talking to each other?’ And oftentimes, the other attorney has no idea. So, I think when TalkingParents is court ordered, practitioners need to go in and make sure that their client is utilizing the app the way it was intended.”
Ms. Reyna says this also helps her pick up on patterns that her clients don’t always notice.
“A lot of times, clients don’t know how big of a deal certain things are for their case. A client may tell me ‘Oh, he’s always late’ or ‘my child is coming back without doing homework’ and other things like that. But then I’ll go through the messages and see that she’s notifying him of doctor’s appointments, and he’s never once shown up. She’s reaching out to let him know the child is feeling better, and he never follows up. Meanwhile, this person is claiming that he really wants to be part of the child’s life, but this non-responsiveness is a big deal. As an attorney, you can learn so much and pick up on little things that clients don’t even think to look for.”
At the end of the day, Ms. Reyna recommends that attorneys encourage clients in all shared parenting situations to utilize the app, whether it be for court or otherwise.
“When parties are utilizing TalkingParents, it really does prevent them from saying things they shouldn’t be saying. It forces them to come to an agreement on things that are in the best interest of everyone involved. For the most part, it really helps parents stay focused on the kids.”