This Week’s Blog by Sarah E. Murray
- The Case Management Agreement is a document that must be filed in every Connecticut divorce case.
- The Case Management Agreement includes important dates for your case, but these dates are not set in stone.
- You and your spouse can agree to proceed with your case more quickly than the deadlines found in your Case Management Agreement.
What is the Case Management Agreement in a Connecticut Divorce Case?
The Case Management Agreement is a document that must be filed in every contested Connecticut divorce case. It is an agreement between the parties and their counsel that sets forth whether the case is a contested custody action, or a case in which parenting issues have been resolved. The Court wants to know at a relatively early point in the case whether there are contested parenting issues that require Court intervention. If parenting issues are resolved, then the Case Management Agreement will state that only financial issues exist in the case.
The Case Management Agreement also includes dates by which discovery requests will be made, discovery completed, depositions taken, appraisals done, and expert disclosures made. This Agreement sets forth the approximate date that the parties anticipate being ready for a settlement conference. The Case Management Agreement needs to be filed with the Court on or before the Case Management Date, which is approximately 90 days after the divorce case is filed.
Each Case Management Agreement is tailored to the facts of the particular case, taking into account the issues in the case, how complicated the case is, and how quickly the parties want the case to move. In cases where the parties cannot agree on the dates in their Case Management Agreement, a judge will decide what the dates are. It is rare for parties not to agree on the dates in their Case Management Agreement, especially when competent Fairfield County divorce attorneys are involved.
Why Aren’t We Abiding by the Dates in my Case Management Agreement?
At Broder Orland Murray & DeMattie LLC, we take the position that the dates in the Case Management Agreement are deadlines that a Court could impose, even if Courts do not impose them in every instance. The general purpose of the Case Management Agreement is to put in writing both parties’ expectations for moving through the discovery phase of the divorce case so that meaningful settlement discussions can begin.
Many times, judges in Connecticut do not enforce the exact dates in a Case Management Agreement with respect to deadlines for discovery requests and depositions because there can be particular reasons or developments in a case that warrant some flexibility. For example, though the Case Management Agreement may say that discovery requests must be made by a certain date, a Court is unlikely to preclude a discovery request after that deadline, particularly where new information has been discovered that leads to additional documents being needed.
One area where the Case Management Agreement does provide an enforceable deadline is with respect to expert disclosures. If the parties are using, or expect to use, experts, such as business valuation experts, real estate appraisers, or earning capacity experts, the Case Management Agreement will establish the deadline by which those experts must be formally disclosed to the other side. Unless the parties and their counsel mutually agree to disclose their experts pursuant to a different schedule, the expert disclosure dates in the Case Management Agreement will be strictly enforced by most judges.
Can My Case Move More Quickly Than the Dates Set Forth in My Case Management Agreement?
Westport and Stamford divorce clients will be pleased to know that they can settle their case at any time, including prior to the date that the Case Management Agreement needs to be submitted. At Broder Orland Murray & DeMattie LLC, we encourage our clients to provide discovery to the other side promptly, prior to the deadline set forth in the Case Management Agreement, so the case does not get stalled while the other side pursues missing or late discovery. If both parties are motivated to complete their case earlier than the dates in their Case Management Agreement and cooperate to ensure that they do so, it will typically get done at a faster pace.
