Are phone messages admissible in court?

I have custody of my son. My crazy X keeps harassing me. Leaving inappropriate messages on my ansewering machine and threatening me. I even have a message where she is yelling at the kids in a extremely abusive manner. I believe she is mentally unstable. She has taken me to court/mediation repeatedly.They wont accept the recordings as evidence. Someone said if I file a restraining order they become admissable. Is this true? Under what circumstances will they Listen? what are the laws regarding this.

To the contrary of another answer, your EX left the message on your machine, therefore knowing that he was being recorded. Regardless of a restraining order, though I would suggest one, the tapes are admissible. Your attorney can enter into evidence of your fear and fear for your children. Ask your attorney to move the case to Superior court.

that is true , if you apply for restraining order due to threats and fear for your and the kids life ..then it will apply, like this you already have that order against them, if tehy call..come within certain amount of distance with u and the kids..then they are breaking the law.. and any threats from there on can be recorded.. Do whats right.. sometimes things can get out of hand..good luck

What you are dealing with is the rule against hearsay. All states have rules of evidence and hearsay is probably the biggest rule. Not that the rule is hard to understand, in fact it is very straight forward. No statement made outside the presence of the court shall be admissible into evidence. Easy, right? Wrong. In all cases, any one can see that would be exceptions to this rule. In truth there are more than 35 exceptions in most states.

These tapes are hearsay as they are recordings of statements made outside of court. Now, we know that tapes are admitted into evidence all the time. However the difference is that the person making the recording is present for the recording and heard the sounds as they were recorded. Therefore, that person would need to be available to testify as to how the tape was made, type of equipment used and other factors.

An answering machine is not enough. Anyone can call your house and rant and rave and make threats and make the comments you give in your question. This makes the tapes unreliable.

If you have an attorney, he or she can explain in detail why the tapes can't be used. If not thing else, they could form the basis of a criminal charge of telephone harassment. That is if the police investigate and she is charged. They may not buy it either.

Get a lawyer!

Request a restraining order from the court to protect yourself and your children, regardless if it will make the recording admissable.

Take the recording to Social Services and tell them that this is evidence of child abuse.

It is legal to record telephone conversations that your Ex leaves on your answering machine.

It is legal to record telephone conservattions if ONE of the parties involved in the conversation agrees to it.

One point further.

The tapes will not be grandfathered in once you get a restraining order. If they are not admissible now, getting a restraining order will not make them 'whole'.

However, if the restraining order states she is not to contact you by telephone between the hours of 9 p.m. and 6 a.m. and you AFTER the order is issued record her calling (with timestamp) during these hours, THOSE tapes can be admitted as evidence of a violation of the order.

Again, it is best to purchase a recording device with a timestamp and caller id.

Also, while it is correct that all states have statutes requiring some form of NOTIFICATION and permission to record, be it one or more parties to the conversation, this is a non-issue in your case IF you use such a device.

First, you are giving consent because you own the device (explicit) and she will be giving implicit consent by continuing her rant once she has been notified that the device will record.

def. get a restraining order.and it is true.my girlfriend had a stalker ex boyfriend who would call her as many times as possible in an hour. we wrote down the time he called once and he called 177 times that day. he had left messages saying he was going to kill her and other threats. when she went to court ( of course I was there for support) when the death threats were brought up he strongly denied that he even called her. his attorney asked to see her phone so he could listen to them and then said he didn't hear anything threatening. the judge asked to hear them for himself and after he did he asked the attorney to get his ears checked because they were obviously threats. The judge absolutely allowed that as evidence and he spent 9 months in jail. ( he also had other charges besides the threats.) If you can make copies of the messages you should do so for safekeeping. her messages were all on her cell and they would delete themselves like after a month. I hope everything works out for you.

Yes they are. Ever seen Judge Judy?

Its illegal to record someone without a warrant or the person being advised that the conversation will be recorded...