What Should You Write Down?

“When did she take the children out of school without telling you?”

Tarun looks at the ceiling of the lawyer’s office. “During the monsoon. July, I think. It happened twice.”

“Which dates?”

He does not know. He remembers the fear exactly, standing at the school gate with the watchman shaking his head. He cannot remember whether it was a Tuesday.

The lawyer turns her screen toward him. The other side’s document lists eleven incidents involving him. Several never happened. Every one has a date, a time and a place.

“At the moment,” she says, “the detail is on their side.”

Memory is not evidence

Bill Eddy and Randi Kreger put writing things down second on the list of urgent steps at the front of their book Splitting, straight after having an emergency plan. Their reason is practical. Most of what happens between two people has no witness. When it comes down to one word against another, the person with specifics is the person who gets believed.

They add a detail people find surprising. A note made on the day of an event is treated as far more credible than one written a week or a month later.

What goes in

Their instructions are plain. Record the date and time, what happened, what was actually said, who else was there and what you did. Note whether police, a doctor or anyone official was involved, and keep any reference numbers.

Write statements and actions. Leave out opinions and interpretations. “She is unstable” is a verdict. “She rang fourteen times between 2 and 3 am, and these are the call logs” is a record.

They suggest noting parenting as well, yours and the other parent’s. The ordinary good days are part of the picture.

What to keep

• Messages. Save emails and texts somewhere secure, the hostile ones above all.
• Papers. Quietly copy bank statements, tax records, payslips and lists of assets and debts. Documents have a way of vanishing.
• Photographs. Take pictures of furniture and valuables, and store them away from the house.
• Your own trail. Do not delete your electronic records. The authors note that you may be legally required to preserve them. Keep them on a separate drive.
• Silence online. They advise stepping back from public social media for the duration, because posts are routinely used as evidence.

Be the reliable narrator

The notebook is only worth something if you are scrupulous. The authors are blunt that exaggeration costs you everything else you say. If your headline does not match your facts, you will be taken for dramatic, or worse.

That includes your own mistakes. Tell your lawyer about them early. A half-truth about you, they point out, is harder to answer than a complete invention.

Turn pages into patterns

A year of entries is too much for any professional to read. Eddy and Kreger recommend sorting it. Pick the three or four patterns that concern you most. Give each a plain heading. Under each, put the three clearest examples, with dates.

They explain why. The people deciding your case are handling dozens of others. A chronological history blurs into all the rest. Three patterns with nine examples can be held in the mind.

It steadies you as well

There is a second use for the notebook, and it has nothing to do with lawyers. When you are told every week that things did not happen the way you remember, a dated page in your own handwriting is something to stand on.

Rules about evidence, recordings and records differ from country to country. Ask a local lawyer what you may collect and how to keep it.