| Advice on court appearance
I know theres a couple of legal brains here,and hope they can help here.
Recently my wife Jayne(as the registered keeper of the car) got a n.i.p. for speeding,nothing outrageous just over the limit in roadworks sort of thing.
However,the first we knew about it was a month and a half later which led to a bit of confusion over who actually was driving,it could have been me,my wife or her sister as we all use each others cars.
Date of offence 29th Oct ,letter arrived 7th of Dec.
We asked the sisters husband who is actually a soliciter and he advised at the time to say we didnt know.
We knew that the ticket was not issued within the time limit,however the letter said in it that it was the SECOND letter they had sent as we had not responded to the first. No letter was received by us,and our post is usually very reliable.
The courts then get tougher sending two policemen to charge Jayne with failing to disclose the driver,(sort of legal double or quits with menaces) her court appearance is on 17th March and she was sent a form to ask how she was pleading -guilty,not guilty,or explanation of actions (I think thats how it was).
She spent a day writing out this explanation of how we didnt know who was driving due to the lapse in time between the offence and the notification but as the keeper she accepts responsibility for the car.
Soliciter reads this and utterly junks it as being a defence not an explanation,and then baffles her with legal babble which just confused and upset her.
She now thinks the court is going to crucify her for wasting its time, what do we do now?
What should she write?
What is the difference between a defence and an explanation?
We do have a different legal system here in Scotland but I think the traffic laws are essentially the same,not sure about the process of dealing with them though.
Annoyed at the bro in law for being unhelpful here,reading between the lines he just doesnt want to deal with it,but sod all we can do.
I'd appreciate proper advice here rather than sympathetic messages as Jayne doesnt want to make this a whole lot worse,she's already looking at increased fines and points for daring to take it this far.
What to do now?  | 
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