Under Illinois Rule of Evidence 106, if your spouse introduces a misleading partial document or recording at trial, you can demand the court admit the rest of the document or recording to provide full context. A divorce trial is very different than other trials. Most trials are about a singular moment in time: an accident, a crime, a breach of contract. In contrast, a divorce trial will require the presentment of incidents that occurred over years…and all of those incidents are in context of each other. Ensuring that the introduction of these incidences include the appropriate context requires that complete writings and recordings are brought before the court.“When a writing or recorded statement or part thereof is introduced by a party, an adverse party may require the introduction at that time of any other part or any other writing or recorded statement which ought in fairness to be considered contemporaneously with it.” Ill. R. Evid. 106 For example, in family law, litigants are notorious for submitting screenshot of a text message that makes one party look terrible. The previous and subsequent texts, however, explain away their behavior. This also applies for single bank statements, partial video recordings, emails without the entire thread, etc. In reality, it is rare that any document or recording truly stands on its own without other contextual recordings or documents to further explain what really happened. Virtually any document or recording can be objected to as being “incomplete and, therefore, inadmissible.” It is not enough to simply demand that the opposing party produce more documents and recordings to provide the judge with more context. When objecting for incompleteness, you must be able to explain to the judge that the additional documents and recordings, in fact, contradict the document or recording that was just submitted as evidence. This is a two-step process. First, you must sufficiently allege that the incomplete document or recording is misleading. “[T]he purpose of Rule 106 is to correct the misleading nature of a writing or recorded statement or a portion thereof that has been taken out of context or is difficult to understand on its own. Where, as here, a defendant has not shown that the admitted writing or recorded statement, standing alone, is misleading, Rule 106 does not provide an avenue for admitting another writing or recorded statement.” People v. Craigen, 997 NE 2d 743 – Ill: Appellate Court, 2nd Dist. […]
