Thursday, August 03, 2006

My Day in Court (Office)

So my boss finally sends me on an assignment that I have some remote education in, law-wise. These past three weeks, I've mostly been dealing with real estate law, a topic my program coordinator somehow forgot to include in our curriculum. Oddly enough, real estate law is widely practiced by law clerks...hmm.

Anyhoo, so she sends me to the Superior Court office to submit an Affidavit. I soon realized why she sent me to do it. It had nothing to do with me using any expertise whatsoever, except to just sit and wait. Yup. For one whole hour to achieve a 2-minute job. In a way, it was good she sent me, so now I know how to submit an Affidavit and whatnot, and the entire experience wasn't so bad.

So I get to the court office and there's already a line. There's about 15 people ahead of me, and it's more like a waiting room, where we have to 'line up'. Basically we just scoot seats whenever the first in line is out. For the first 30 minutes of my being in line, what else could I do but listen to my MP3 player and people-watch. Lawyers, freaks, ghetto, cops, babies, weirdos...

I sat next to this middle-aged woman. She was very nice and helped me figure out if I was in the right line. She was there to submit some documents for her own divorce, and it was her fifth time there in one month!

Her soon-to-be ex-husband was making things difficult and filing all types of motion that meant she had to keep coming back to court. This provides another reason to not get married, and above all, don't get divorced. Spousal/Child support calculation is horrendous and then there's the forms to be filled out. Ugh. I'd stay in a bad marriage to avoid all that pain in the neck.

Funny enough, the woman's husband also just happened to be there in the court office with his new girlfriend. Apparently he was there to file yet another motion and he actually personally served her with papers while we were in line. Man, that was awkward. I felt bad for this lady because she told me she felt sick to her stomach just knowing he was in the same room as her. So much drama. It didn't help that she was on the phone most of the time calling up people (friends and family?) to let them know what was going on and give them a play by play as she watched him.

That was my excitement for the day, actually. Sad, eh? Although I learned quite a bit from just sitting in line (thank gawd for my mp3 player), like, how to never get married. And above all, don't hook up with a guy whose had marriages before you (besides the fact that he's pretty 'used'). There's a reason why he's married multiple times.

The CTV newscrew was there, too but I have no idea why. Is there some high-profile case going on now? That terrorist ring thing still going on?

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