Communication records are an important part of divorce or custody litigation. They're records that are going to be generally your email communication, your text message communication. If you're on a communication app with your co-parent, such as OurFamilyWizard or AppCloser Talking Parents, that's what I'm considering communication records. So first, let's talk about how we're going to gather those. I can tell you when I started practicing law back in 2003, I didn't have a lot of communication records. Technology's changed and the way we preserve things have changed, and now we have text message records, we have email records, we have communication apps.
So there's been an emergence of the communication records and there's been an emergence of how we utilize those, how we preserve those, and the best way to gather those. So if you have text message communication between you and your spouse, or you and your child, or you and a third party, that you think would be relevant to something that we're working on in your case, you can gather that record. With text message communication, I'm going to tell you the best way to gather it is to use either an app designed to preserve the text message communication and generate a PDF record, or if you have an iPhone, there's specific software that you can use. If you need help in finding the right resource to do that, I can guide you to that, or my staff can help you with that. The least effective way is screenshots. I do not like screenshots. The problem with screenshots is they're generally not going to be admissible into evidence. They're not date-stamped. It's hard to tell who they're from. They can be doctored.
We don't want to use those. If all you have available is screenshots because you have an old phone or you took a picture of your child's phone or something like that, you can bring those in and we can try to use those, but let's avoid them if we can and let's use one of the methods that are going to be good preservation methods. Emails are the same way. You know, try to provide the entire email thread.
Coparenting app communication is the easiest, 'cause coparenting app communication is designed for us to be able to download and use a record. So now that we know how to gather the records, let's talk about what we're looking for. A lot of records that are communication records that you gather, especially if they're text message or they're coparent app communications, if you've been communicating for a long time in that method, you might have a very long record. It is not unusual for a client to pull their record or me to pull their OFW record and it's 1,000 pages or 2,000 pages or something really, really lengthy. If you have a record that is more than, let's say, 25 pages, it is good for you to go through that record first and highlight for me what you want me to look at. Why do you wanna do that? I bill by the hour.
If you give me a 2,000-page record, you are going to spend upwards of probably $1,500 for me to painstakingly go through your communication record and look for things that we can use. You can save yourself a lot of time and money if you do this yourself. What I would want you to do in the text, in the record, and I don't care if it's text messages, emails, co-parent communication, once you have that communication record, You can either have it on your computer and use a PDF program, or you can have it old school paper. Get highlighters.
Let's get two different colored highlighters. One highlighter we're gonna use to highlight communication that you want me to look at that you think highlights a topic that we're exploring with the other party. And one highlighter I want you to use to highlight communication you're concerned about you being asked about. Okay. That was questionable communication on your part. Don't be afraid to show me your questionable communication because if you have it, the other side has it, and we're gonna figure out how to deal with it. Hiding it from me doesn't make it go away. It just means that you're gonna get confronted with it and we're not going to be prepared. So use a separate highlighter. If you've engaged in co-parent communication or communication with your spouse that you think is problematic, Just highlight it and show it to me. As far as communication with your co-parent or your spouse that you want to highlight and show to me, we're looking for a couple of different things. If we have a case where we're talking about legal custody, decision-making for your children, can you make joint decisions for your children's welfare, can you communicate effectively? Go through that communication record and look for, times that you've asked for information and it's not been responded to, times that you've asked to make a decision and you haven't been able to agree, or times that you've asked to make a decision or they've asked to make a decision and the process of arriving at that decision was filled with conflict or was very convoluted and it was very difficult to reach a decision.
When you have a legal custody dispute, that means that you and your co-parent can't agree on a major decision for your child. You can review your co-parent communication record and easily highlight for me, these are joint decisions that we should be making or need to be making, and here is the convoluted process or the problematic process. Also, look in your co-parent communication for communication that is uncivil, that is name-calling, that is derogatory, that is veering into topics unrelated to what you're discussing. For example, if you say, "Hey, can I pick up at 3 o'clock on Friday?" And what we get is a laundry list of all the ways you've wronged your spouse in the divorce, highlight that for me because that is also relevant to whether or not you are able to effectively communicate.
So that's something I want to see. Okay. Um, look for instances where there have been disagreements, uncivil communication, difficulty reaching a decision, um, and that is typically what we're looking for in co-parent communication. the last thing you can look for as far as conflicts that you want to highlight for me would be kind of unreasonable bargaining. And what I would call unreasonable bargaining would be if you said, "Hey, can we sign child up for soccer?" And the spouse said, "Yes, if you say I don't have to pay child support anymore." So unreasonable bargaining would be, I'm trying to make a decision and that decision is being leveraged on something that's completely off topic or completely unrelated to it or unfair or a demand meant to kind of coerce me into doing something that the other person wants me to do.
That I shouldn't have to do. So if you use those guidelines and you go through your communication record, even if it's 2,000 pages, you can use those two highlighters and give to me concisely all the information that I need. Thank