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It is 3:40 on a Friday. Your desk is almost clear, the kettle is on, and then the phone rings. A client says the other parent has just told her she is taking the kids across the country tonight. She has the boarding passes. The flight leaves at 9. You look at the clock, and you know your evening is gone.
This is the moment that separates the tidy version of litigation you learned about from the version you actually practise. Nobody schedules an emergency. It lands on you when the registry is thinking about closing and everyone you would normally call has already left. What follows is how that afternoon runs, and the small number of things you cannot skip even when everything is on fire.
The Call That Ends the Weekend
The first job on an urgent call is not legal. It is to slow the client down enough to get facts you can act on. People in crisis narrate feelings, and you need times, names, and documents. When is the flight. Who has the children right now. Is there a court order already in place, and if so, what does it actually say. Get the client to read it to you, word for word, rather than paraphrasing what they think it means.
Write as she talks. You are already drafting the affidavit in your head, and the phrases she uses now, before anyone has coached her, are usually the truest ones you will get. Keep her on the line while you check the court's after-hours process, because it varies by jurisdiction and by the kind of relief you need. Some courts have a duty judge reachable through a designated number. Others expect you to attend first thing Monday and simply preserve the status quo until then. You need to know which world you are in before you promise the client anything.
Note. Confirm your local after-hours and urgent-motion procedure now, on a calm day, and keep the contact details somewhere you can find them in thirty seconds. The afternoon of the emergency is the worst time to be reading a practice direction for the first time.
Deciding If It Is Truly Urgent
Here is the uncomfortable part. Most files that feel urgent to a client are not urgent in the way a court means it. Urgency is not the same as important, and it is not the same as inconvenient. The court is asking a narrow question: will someone or something suffer real harm that cannot be undone if this waits for the ordinary process. A child about to be removed from the jurisdiction tonight qualifies. A frustrating email from opposing counsel does not, however much it stings.
Be honest with yourself before you are honest with the client, because a judge dragged out on a Friday evening for something that could plainly have waited will remember it, and so will the client when the costs endorsement lands. If you routinely struggle to tell the difference, it is worth reading through your own past files with fresh eyes. Our piece on handling urgent motions and the broader family and civil practice hub both circle this same instinct from other angles.
Urgency is not the same as important, and it is not the same as inconvenient. Devon Reyes
The Bare Minimum the Court Still Needs
Once you have decided it is genuinely urgent, the temptation is to throw everything at it. Resist that. Under pressure, a lean, honest record beats a thick, breathless one. The judge has minutes, not hours, and wants to understand the problem, the relief, and why now.
Cut the motion to the minimum the court needs. In practice that means:
- A short affidavit that tells the story in plain order, sticking to facts the client can swear to and attaching only the documents that matter, such as the boarding passes or the existing order.
- A draft order that says exactly what you want, in language the judge can sign without redrafting. Vague relief is slow relief.
- A one-page note or short factum, if your court expects one, naming the test and the two or three authorities you are actually relying on.
What falls away is the polish. Perfect formatting, exhaustive chronologies, and every possible argument can wait. A disciplined file chronology that works pays off precisely here, because the key facts and dates are already recorded and you only need to extract the relevant ones. If you are the sort of person who keeps clean draft affidavit templates and a saved order shell in your practice management setup, this is the night you are grateful for it.
Tip. Draft the order first, then the affidavit. Working backward from the relief you want keeps the affidavit focused on the facts the judge needs to grant it, and stops you from burying the ask under background.
Serving When There Is No Time
Now the hard question of the other side. The default rule is that the responding party gets notice and a chance to be heard. Urgency does not erase that. It only compresses it. Where you can give short notice, do, even if it is a phone call and an email attaching your materials with an honest apology for the timeline. Judges look far more kindly on a party who tried to reach the other side than on one who quietly went in alone.
Sometimes true notice is impossible or would defeat the very purpose, as when telling the other parent would simply speed up the departure. That is when you consider proceeding without notice, and you should understand that the bar is high and your duty of candour is total. On a without-notice motion you must put the other side's likely position before the court yourself, including the facts that hurt you. Hide something and the order you win on Friday can be set aside on Tuesday, with costs. Keep meticulous notes of every attempt to give notice, the times, the numbers, and what happened, because you will be asked.
After the Order, the Cleanup
Say it works. The judge grants an interim order restraining the removal of the children and sets a return date. You exhale. You are not finished. An urgent order almost always comes with strings: it is temporary, it may require you to serve it on the other party at once, and it will need to be perfected and entered properly at the registry. The order the judge spoke aloud and the order that gets formally issued are not the same thing until you do the paperwork.
Serve promptly and prove it. Diarize the return date the moment you have it, and begin preparing for the hearing where both sides finally get heard, which is a different animal from the frantic ex parte appearance. Loop back with the client while the events are fresh, because their memory of tonight will fade fast and you will want it for the affidavit that supports the next step. Getting the consent order paperwork trail right, or the contested version of it, is what turns a dramatic Friday win into a durable one. A tool like A1 CMS earns its keep here mostly by making sure the return date, the served copies, and the client follow-up do not slip through the cracks over a busy weekend.
The thing to hold onto is that urgent work is not a different craft. It is ordinary craft done fast, with the courage to leave out what does not matter and the discipline to keep what does. The clients who call you at 3:40 on a Friday will not remember whether your factum was beautiful. They will remember that you picked up, that you were straight with them about whether it was really an emergency, and that when it was, the plane did not leave with the kids on it.
