A court date is one of the few occasions when somebody who has lost track of you knows exactly where you will be, on which day, at roughly what time, and that you will be there for hours.
It is also emotionally the hardest day of the process, which is precisely when planning is least likely to happen. So it is worth doing now, in advance, whether your date is next week or has not been fixed.
Before the day
- Ask your lawyer what appears on the papers. Specifically whether your address is on anything he or his lawyer will see. Ask this early — it is much easier to use a different service address at the start than to correct it later.
- Ask whether you have to be there at all. Sometimes you do not, sometimes evidence can be given differently, and in some circumstances somebody can apply on your behalf. Never assume attendance is compulsory without asking.
- Ask about waiting arrangements. Whether there is a separate room, whether you can wait somewhere other than the corridor, whether you can arrive and leave at different times from him. Ask in advance; nobody can arrange it on the morning.
- Take somebody. This is the most useful single item on the page. A relative, a friend, somebody from an organisation. Not to speak — to be there, and to be a witness to anything that happens outside the courtroom.
- Sort out the children. Arrange care for the whole day and a fallback person, because court runs late as a matter of routine. Do not take children unless you have been told to.
- Tell your employer you need the day, not the morning.
- Check what you need to bring with your lawyer, and photograph every document before you hand any of it over.
Getting there and away
Treat the journey as the exposed part, because it is.
Arrive earlier than the time you were given rather than at it. Do not use a route that starts from a new address if you are keeping that address private — begin the journey somewhere else. Do not park in the obvious place, and do not be the last person to leave.
Afterwards, do not go straight home. Go somewhere public first, wait, and see whether anybody is behind you. This is the specific moment when a woman is most likely to be followed to a new address, because he has just seen her and knows she is alone. How to tell whether you are being followed sets out what to do.
If possible, arrange to be collected. It removes the whole problem.
What to expect on the day
Delay, mostly. Cases are listed together and matters routinely do not start when they are supposed to. Take food, water, something to read, and money for transport home at a later hour than planned.
Expect to see him, and expect that to be harder than you have prepared for. Many women describe the physical reaction as the thing that surprised them — shaking, feeling sick, going blank. That is ordinary and it is not a sign that you cannot do this.
Expect an approach. A relative, a friend of his, or a lawyer, wanting to settle it in the corridor. Decide now what your answer is, so you are not deciding it there: that anything to be discussed goes through your lawyer.
What actually happens in the room covers the procedure itself.
If he approaches you
- Do not engage, even briefly, and even to be polite.
- Move to where there are people — the clerk’s area, a security post, near your lawyer.
- Tell your lawyer immediately, and tell court security.
- Write down the time and what was said, the same day.
- If there is a protection order in force and he came near you, that is a breach and it matters. What to do about a breach is set out separately.
Contact at court is taken seriously precisely because it happens in front of independent people. It is one of the easiest breaches to prove and one of the most frequently not reported.
The days afterwards
This is the part nobody plans for, and it is where the risk actually sits.
Whatever the outcome, the days following a hearing are frequently the worst of the whole process. If he lost, there is anger and a sense that you did it to him. If he won, there is confidence. Either way something has just changed and he has been reminded of the whole situation.
So: tell somebody the outcome the same day and arrange to be in contact over the following days. Do not be alone in the first evening if you can avoid it. Expect a surge of messages or calls, and decide in advance who reads them. Be more careful than usual about the school run and about routine journeys for a week or two.
And expect to feel considerably worse than the outcome justifies, even when it went well. A day spent in the same room as him, describing the worst things that have happened to you, costs something regardless of the result.
If it is adjourned
It very often is, sometimes repeatedly, and it is demoralising in a way people are unprepared for. You brace yourself, arrange childcare, lose a day’s income, and nothing happens.
Ask your lawyer why, ask for the next date in writing, and ask whether anything can be done to prevent another adjournment. Repeated adjournment is sometimes a tactic, and a lawyer can apply for costs or ask the court to take a firmer line.
Do not let it end the case. Attrition is the most reliable way these matters are defeated, and the party with more money can usually afford more delay.
What we can do
Send somebody with you, which is what women ask for most often and value most afterwards. Cover transport and the day’s lost income. Arrange childcare. And be the person you ring that evening.
If you have no lawyer, that is the thing to sort out before the date rather than after — the free routes exist and legal support is one of our six programmes.
Questions people ask
Do I have to be there?
Not always. Sometimes evidence can be given another way, and in some circumstances an application can be made on your behalf. Ask your lawyer rather than assuming attendance is compulsory.
Will he get my address from the court papers?
Ask your lawyer at the very start what appears on the documents. Using a service address from the beginning is straightforward; correcting it after filing is not.
He tried to talk to me in the corridor. What should I do?
Do not engage, move to where there are people, tell your lawyer and court security, and write down the time and what was said. If a protection order is in force, that is a breach and it is one of the easiest to prove.
The case keeps being adjourned. Is that normal?
Unfortunately yes, and it is sometimes a tactic. Ask for the next date in writing and ask your lawyer whether costs can be sought. Attrition is the most reliable way these cases are defeated.
When is the risk highest?
The days immediately after a hearing, whatever the outcome. Tell somebody the result the same day, try not to be alone that evening, and be more careful than usual about routine journeys for a week or two.
If you need help now
If you are in immediate danger, call 112. To talk to HealBridge, call or send a message to +2348025170267, or use the form on our contact page. Every page on this site has a Quick Exit button at the top right, and pressing the letter E three times does the same thing.
Before you rely on anything on this page
We publish these articles so that you can understand a subject and work out what to ask for. They are written carefully and in good faith. They are still general information about how things usually work, and not advice about your situation, which we do not know.
- This is not legal advice.
- We are not a law firm. Criminal law in Nigeria is largely a state matter, the VAPP Act applies in a state only if that state adopted it, and statutory, customary and Islamic marriages are governed by different law and different courts. Two people with the same facts can have genuinely different options. Get advice from a lawyer who practises where you live — and if cost is the obstacle, ask us, because arranging that is part of what we do.
- This is not medical advice.
- Nothing here is a diagnosis and nothing here replaces being examined. Do not delay seeing a doctor, nurse or pharmacist because of something you read here, and do not start, stop or change any treatment on the strength of it. If something is time critical, go and be seen.
- This is not counselling, and it is not financial advice.
- Articles about trauma, sleep, money, debt, renting or starting a business describe what commonly helps. They are not therapy and they are not a recommendation about your own money. Speak to a counsellor, a qualified adviser or your own bank about your circumstances.
- It may be out of date, or wrong for where you are.
- Law changes, services close, numbers stop answering and practice varies by state. We correct what we find, and we cannot promise that every page is current on the day you read it. Where we do not have something confirmed, we say so rather than fill the gap.
- Reading this does not make us your lawyer or your doctor.
- No professional relationship is created by reading an article, and we cannot accept liability for decisions taken on the strength of one. What we can do is help you reach somebody who is qualified to advise you, which is what the legal and health parts of our work exist for.
- We cannot promise an outcome, and we cannot make anybody safe.
- A protection order is a piece of paper backed by an enforcement system that is inconsistent. A plan works until the day it does not. Anybody in this field promising safety is selling something, and the promise itself is dangerous because it stops people planning.
Do not let this notice stop you acting. If you are in immediate danger, call 112. If something is medically urgent, go to a hospital — you do not need a police report to be treated. And if you do not know where to start, that is a normal way to begin: use the contact page and we will take it from there.
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