Case Timeline Planner

Ask any lawyer what they most want at a first meeting and the answer is rarely a document bundle. It is a chronology: what happened, in what order, and what proves each entry.

This tool builds one. Add the dates you know, describe each in a line, and it will sort them and produce a chronology you can copy. It calculates nothing and predicts nothing.

Why order matters more than volume

Family disputes are argued in sequence. Whether a payment was late depends on when it was due. Whether a departure was wrongful depends on what consent existed beforehand. Whether an application is urgent depends on when the risk arose and what has happened since.

A narrative written from memory tends to arrange events by how strongly they are felt. A chronology arranges them by when they happened, which is how a court will look at them — and it usually exposes at least one gap that needs an answer.

What to include

• Marriage, separation and any date proceedings began, anywhere.
• Every order or agreement, with the date it was made and the date it took effect.
• Dates children moved, changed school, travelled, or were due to travel.
• Payments due and payments actually made, with dates.
• Any hearing, filing or response date already fixed.
• Dates you asked for something and dates you received an answer, or did not.

What to leave out

Opinions, characterisations and arguments. “12 March — school fees due, not paid” is a chronology entry. “12 March — he showed again that he does not care” is not, and mixing the two makes the whole document easier to attack.

Leave out anything you obtained unlawfully. Recordings, messages or documents you were not entitled to access can create a separate problem that overshadows the one you started with.

What this tool cannot do

• It does not calculate legal deadlines, limitation periods or appeal windows. Those depend on the route, the court and the date of a specific step, and must be confirmed for your case.
• It does not predict how long a matter will take. Duration depends on the route, service, evidence, experts, hearings, settlement, appeal and enforcement.
• It does not assess whether an event matters legally. Ordering events is not the same as weighing them.
• It is not advice, and a tidy chronology does not make a case.

What happens to what you enter

The planner above runs in this browser tab. Each entry you add is sorted and listed by a script on this page. Nothing is transmitted to this website, nothing is stored on your device, and no entry is retained once the tab is closed.

Because nothing is saved, a chronology you want to keep has to leave the page: print it, or copy it into a document you control, and update it as the matter develops. If the device you are using is shared, that is itself a reason to keep the file somewhere else.

Turning it into evidence

A chronology becomes powerful when each line points to a document. Add a short reference in the description — the invoice number, the message date, the order reference — and the list stops being an account and starts being a map of your evidence. That is the version worth bringing to a consultation.

What a family court normally accepts is described in Evidence in UAE Family Cases, and messages and screenshots in Preserving Digital Evidence in a UAE Family Dispute.

Turning the result into a next step

The output of any of these tools is preparation, not advice. It is most useful when it becomes the first page of a consultation: bring it, and the conversation can start from organised facts rather than from a blank page.

To take it further, use the enquiry form on this page with a short description of the matter, or contact the office directly on +971 50 627 5196. If your matter is urgent — a proposed child travel, an imminent hearing, or immediate safety — say so, and call as well as writing.

Document Checklists covers the papers that sit behind each dated entry. A chronology is most useful when it is reviewed with a lawyer, which is what a book a consultation is for.

A worked example: two chronologies of the same events

Illustrative only.

The first version reads: “Things had been difficult for a long time. In the spring he stopped contributing properly and then over the summer he took the children away without really discussing it, which was typical. Since then he has ignored everything.”

The second version reads: “3 March — monthly transfer of 8,000 received (bank statement). 3 April — transfer of 3,000 received. 3 May — no transfer. 14 June — children travelled to [country] with father; written consent given 2 June for return on 30 June (copy held). 30 June — children did not return. 2 July — message sent asking for return date; no reply. 9 July — second message; no reply.”

Both describe the same months. The first is an argument and can be met with a different argument. The second is a sequence of provable events, and it immediately raises the questions that matter: what did the consent actually say, when did non-return become wrongful, and what was done in the days after 30 June.

Note also what the second version does not do. It does not characterise the other parent, and it does not assert that the retention was unlawful — that is a legal conclusion for someone else to reach on the facts. Restraint here is not weakness; it is what makes the document usable.

Keeping the chronology honest as the matter develops

Add to it as things happen rather than reconstructing later. Contemporaneous entries are more reliable and are recognised as such. When you learn that an entry was wrong, correct it and note that you have — a chronology that shows a correction is more credible than one that has quietly changed.

Keep a separate note of anything you are unsure about. Uncertainty recorded as uncertainty is useful; uncertainty presented as fact is a problem waiting to surface.

Frequently asked questions