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I am the applicant. Yesterday in the position statement of the respondent there was the following statement:

“There is now produced and shown to me marked JS1 a true copy of his email to my friend dated 8th October 2018”

I do not know which email the position statement is referring to (it wasn’t presented to me).

Can such thing (I will not call it evidence) be admitted in the court?

I have certain views about privacy and confidentiality, as well as family law system in the UK that operates as secret courts. I treat all my communication as public (don’t trust my device, don’t trust internet provider, don’t trust my browser) and yet I cannot understand why a 3rd party communication should matter to the court in any way?

The main question remain valid - is it legally valid to include a correspondence to a 3rd party in the position statement?

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I don’t understand why you think this is a “3rd party communication” - as I read it it says it’s an email from you. You are most definitely not a third party. Notwithstanding, communication between 3rd parties is not prima facie excluded. For example, correspondence between your company and your accountant (who are both third parties) is likely to be extremely relevant to a family law case.

Assuming that it is relevant (which is hard to say without context) and that it doesn’t fall foul of one of the evidentiary rules (hearsay, opinion, privilege etc.) there is no reason why it wouldn’t be admissible.

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  • It is a correspondence to a 3rd party. It is not correspondence to the Court, solicitor, respondent... I would imagine I can write anything I want to portray a certain image and I do not understand why that would be relevant? – Figuring things out Dec 6 '18 at 6:26
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    I can see lost of reasons - let’s say you have put in your evidence that you were in Barcelona on a given day but in the email you state that you were in Moscow. Even if this is not a matter on which anything turns it damages your credibility as a witness which is always a good thing for your opponent. – Dale M♦ Dec 6 '18 at 6:30
  • That leads to yet another discussion of standards of evidence in Family Law - I'd much rather be treated as a criminal because then Criminal Law standards of evidence would apply. To establish credibility is difficult because it is the other party who controls the content of the court bundle (despite the requirement to communicate with me) and advisory service is not attending the court (despite court being the only place to address disagreements and my requests for them to attend). – Figuring things out Dec 6 '18 at 6:40
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    There is no difference in evidentiary rules between criminal and civil cases. Just a different standard of proof. – Dale M♦ Dec 6 '18 at 8:30
  • Evidence rules in the U.K. allow the consideration of much more hearsay than would be allowed in American courts. Generally, it can be considered any time that the person making the statement is present and subject to cross-examination, and any time that the person making the statement is unavailable, in addition to the circumstances when it would be allowed in American courts. But, even under American rules of evidence, this statement would not be hearsay and would be admissible evidence since it is a statement of a party to the case. So, the only possible objection would be relevance. – ohwilleke Dec 6 '18 at 8:46

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