How to Give Testimony – A Tutorial for Foster and Adoptive Parents

In a recent article for foster and adoptive parents approaching trial, we made the point that preparation is king. This article dives deeper into making the most of the foster parent’s testimony at trial. Specifically, we want to demonstrate the most effective way for foster parents to provide testimony at trial.

Number 1: Practice

Practice every question that you will be asked. Role play with a spouse or significant other. Clarity and brevity are your best friends. Those best friends come with a lot of work. For example, if you are asked on the stand, “Did you notice anything different about the child after visitation with her father?”, you need to clearly and concisely describe the tell-tale trauma responses. Perhaps you might answer with, “Yes, she normally goes to sleep easily and stays asleep with no problems. After visitation, she would lay awake in bed and cry for two hours. Then she would scream through night with night terrors. These behaviors only occurred on the days she would visit.”

Number 2: Organize

Organize your evidence so it’s easy to present, easy to understand, and easy for the court to admit into evidence. As the foster-adoptive parent, you have 10,000 times more information that is 1,000 times qualitatively better. The struggle is getting that information culled down to the cream of the crop and into a format that will survive the titration of the rules of evidence.

For example, you probably have medical records that shows how the child has progressed developmentally in your care. Those can likely be self-authenticated. You probably have school records that show the same thing. Those can’t be self-authenticated and will require the custodian of records or the teacher who created the record to come and testify. You may have captured social media postings of the natural parent. These will have to be carefully curated to show the time and author. Even then the judge may only let those items in through the natural parent.

Whatever your evidence is, do you best to cull it down to the most relevant with the highest impact. The rule of brevity tells us that we will be more persuasive with a few items, as opposed to boring the judge with too many items.

Number 3: Prepare for Cross

Enemies lurk in the court room. If a friendly attorney asks you a question, treat them like a kindergarten teacher treats a question from a student. The kindergarten teach understands that the overall goal is to get the child to read. So, she explains way more than the child asked about. So, if a friendly attorney asks, “Did you see any change in the child’s behavior after visits,” you don’t just say, “Yes.” You use the question as a teaching moment to explain to the court what is in the child’s best interest. If an opposing attorney asks that same question, they aren’t trying to learn to read. So, you might just say, “Yes.”

Also, opposing attorneys may attempt to trap you in a question by misrepresenting your previous testimony. For example, an opposing attorney might ask, “So previously when you testified about the child’s long-standing sleeping problems, you said they increased after visits, right?” You have to really pay attention because the dirty little trick is in the first clause of the question. A good response might be, “Actually I did not say that she had long standing sleep problems.”

Now, you could stop there, but go ahead and flip the script on this conniving attorney and use it as a teaching moment for the court, “What I said was that the child only had screaming fits and night terrors after visiting with the natural parent. It was very unusual. She was so out of sorts and we even saw the negative effects the next day. It really made me wonder if the mother had abused or traumatized…” “Objection, You Honor…this witness isn’t qualified to give an opinion on …” the opposing attorney may blurt out nervously.

For foster and adoptive parents giving testimony at trial, these three tips should take you a long way.