How to Put Years of a Relationship Into a Timeline a Court Can Follow

It is nearly always the same moment. You have decided to write it all down, the notebook is open on the kitchen table, and you cannot find the first line. Because where does it start? The thing from last March, or the thing four years before that, which only makes sense if you explain the three years in between? So you start somewhere, and an hour later there are eleven pages going round in circles.

That is not a failure of memory or of writing. It is the shape of the thing. Coercive control is a pattern, and a pattern has no first line — it has a hundred small entries that only mean something sitting next to each other. Told as a story, it sounds like a complaint. Laid out in order, it looks like what it is.

So here is the method I use when I read a record for a court, written so you can do it yourself: at a kitchen table, in pieces, with nobody's permission.

One list, in date order

Not by category. By date.

That is the single most useful thing you can do with what is in your head, and it is the thing lawyers most often have to pay somebody else to do. Everything goes into one list — the money, the phone, the long silences, what happened after separation — in the order it happened.

Sorted by topic, it becomes a set of arguments a reader has to take on trust. In date order it shows a life narrowing: a calendar getting emptier, a contact list shorter, hours changing, an account moving. That is visible in a way describing it never is.

Four columns are enough: when (the date, or the closest you can get), what happened (plainly, in your own words), who else was there, and anything that records it — a message, a bank statement, a receipt, a school note. That last column is only a note to yourself, so you can find things later; you are not gathering anything yet. One event per row; two lines is fine.

Write what happened, not what it meant

This is the rule that saves the most work. Facts, dates and actual words are what carry weight. Conclusions are what a court decides.

When you catch yourself writing a label, stop and ask what you saw or heard that made you think it. Write that instead. It will feel like you are making it smaller. You are making it usable.

When you cannot remember the date

Most people cannot remember most dates. That is normal, and it is not a reason to leave something out. Anchor it to something you can date — a birthday, a move, a job, a pregnancy, a school year. “Some time after we moved to the Bay Street apartment, so after September 2019” is far more useful than no date at all.

Say plainly when you are estimating, and never make a date more exact than you know it to be. An account clear about what it is unsure of is believed more, not less.

The small things are the point

Most people put in the worst nights and leave out the ordinary Tuesdays, and the ordinary Tuesdays are what show a pattern. On most of the days that matter, nothing dramatic happened at all.

Three questions turn up the most, and are the ones most often skipped:

• Decisions you could not make. Not how you felt — what you could not decide. Where you went, what you spent, whether you worked. And which did you stop even trying to make?
• Ways you changed your own behaviour. Did you stop inviting people over? Delete messages before they were seen? Rehearse conversations in the car?
• What you lost. Relationships, name by name. Work. Money. Time. A community, a licence.

People leave these out because they feel like things they did. They are often what shows the shape of it most clearly.

The children get their own list

Keep a second list, separate: the date, which child and their age, what happened and what they saw or heard, and what you noticed in them afterwards. Include what they heard through a wall or from another room — when a court is deciding about children, being exposed to family violence counts whether a child was in the room or not, and a pattern of coercive and controlling behaviour is family violence. It does not have to be a crime, and nobody has to have been hurt.

Two cautions matter more here than anything else in this piece. Write only what you saw and heard yourself, and what a child said to you on their own, unasked — do not question the children about any of this, and do not record them. And describe, do not diagnose: “she stopped sleeping through the night around March” is useful; “she has anxiety” is not yours to say.

Then read it back as somebody who does not believe you

When the list is mostly done, put it away for a day. Then read it once as though you were a person who does not believe a word of it. Where does it sound vague? Where is there a label in place of a fact? Where is a date missing?

Make it more specific wherever you can. And where something in your own conduct is likely to be raised, put it in — an account that includes the harder parts is more believable than one that does not.

What this is, and what it isn't

It is not a court document. It is not sworn, it is not filed, and nothing in it has to be final. What to claim and what to file is for you and a lawyer. This is the thing you bring with you, so the time you get with anyone goes much further.

If an expert report comes up at some point, the thing worth knowing is this: a report says what the records show, for whichever side asks. If your records show a pattern, it says so and how far it goes. If they do not, it says that too. That is what makes one worth anything in court. Most people do not need a report. Nearly everyone needs their own account in order.

And if the whole thing feels like too much tonight, write one row. Then another tomorrow. That is how all of these get built.

If this is where you are

• Organising Your Own Account — a free workbook with the prompts and the chronology sheets in it. To be walked through it, Your Account, In Order is a short course built on it.
• Representing yourself? — what to expect, and what helps most without a lawyer.
• Communicating Safely With Your Ex — for messages and handovers in the meantime.

If someone can see your phone, your email or a shared account, use a device they cannot reach, or keep this on paper somewhere safe. You can stop and come back to it.

Elizabeth Joy Dubois, MSW, RSW. General information, not legal advice on your own case.