5 words to avoid in a family court statement

The words below usually come from real frustration. You're not exaggerating on purpose. It genuinely feels like every time.

But the first job of anyone reading against you is to find one exception. They only need one. And once they have it, everything else you've written is read differently.

The five

1. Always. "She always cancels." One counterexample and the sentence is gone, along with your credibility on everything near it.

2. Never. "He never tells me about school." Same problem. It takes one email to disprove.

3. Constantly. It sounds like evidence and means nothing measurable. It invites the question "how many times, exactly?", which you should already have answered.

4. Every time. The most fragile phrase in the language. It's almost never literally true, and it will be tested.

5. Refused. A conclusion dressed as a fact. Write what was said and when, and let the reader conclude.

Swap it for a number

On 34 of the last 40 scheduled handovers…

Specific, checkable, and able to survive questioning in a way "every single time" cannot.

You can't write that sentence without a log behind it. That's the whole reason to keep one: not for the dramatic entries, but so that when you sit down to write, you have the real figure rather than the feeling.

Before you file anything

Search your draft for these five words. Each one is either a number waiting to be found, or a conclusion that should be replaced with what actually happened.

Absolutes are only one of the traps that catch otherwise strong statements. Diagnostic labels, quoting fragments of messages and speaking for your children are the others, and they're worth checking for in the same pass.

General information, not legal advice. Court process differs between countries and regions; check anything that matters to your case with a qualified lawyer where you live.