> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://help.rytz.com.au/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# Evidence Portfolio — overview

> Your secure digital vault for every piece of evidence in your matter. Photos, messages, documents, audio, calendar events — organised, searchable, and ready when the court asks for it.

import { Card, CardGroup, Note, Tip, Warning } from '@mintlify/components'

The **Evidence Portfolio** is RYTZ's evidence vault. It is where you collect, organise, and prepare every piece of evidence your matter touches — from a screenshot of an SMS exchange three months ago, through to the affidavit annexures you'll file at the court door.

It is one of the most-trafficked surfaces on the platform because evidence is what wins (or loses) family-law matters. Court submissions, FDR positions, parenting-plan readiness, settlement contributions arguments — all of them are only as strong as the underlying evidence stack.

## Why the platform handles evidence as a first-class surface

Evidence in Australian family-law matters is governed by the [Evidence Act 1995 (Cth)](https://classic.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/cth/consol_act/ea199580/) and the [Federal Circuit and Family Court of Australia (Family Law) Rules 2021](https://classic.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/cth/consol_reg/fcafclr2021568/). Both impose specific demands:

* **Provenance and authenticity** — the court needs to know where evidence came from and that it has not been tampered with.
* **Admissibility** — hearsay, opinion, and improperly obtained evidence may be excluded.
* **Disclosure** — there is an ongoing obligation to disclose all relevant evidence (Part VIIIB of the Family Law Rules; from June 2025 these obligations sit in the Family Law Act itself with stronger penalties for non-compliance).
* **Form and bundling** — evidence presented to court has to be ordered, paginated, indexed, and (for affidavit annexures) labelled in a specific way.

A folder of unsorted phone screenshots fails most of these. The Evidence Portfolio is built so the evidence you collect organically — in the moment, when something happens — is captured in a way that holds up later.

<Note>
  Evidence collection is one of the few aspects of family-law matters where amateur effort genuinely competes with professional. A diligent self-represented parent who captures evidence carefully, dates it accurately, and bundles it methodically will often produce a better evidence stack than a busy lawyer would — because you are closest to the events.
</Note>

## What sits inside

The Portfolio is organised by **evidence type** and by **calendar event**. Both views show the same underlying items.

<CardGroup cols={2}>
  <Card title="By evidence type" icon="folder-tree">
    Photographs · Documents · Correspondence (SMS, email, messaging apps) · Audio recordings · Video · Notes you take yourself · Third-party records (school reports, medical notes, police records). Each type has type-appropriate metadata fields.
  </Card>

  <Card title="By calendar event" icon="calendar">
    Anchor evidence to dates — the changeover that didn't happen, the medical appointment your ex didn't show up to, the school event you missed because of a sudden re-routing. Calendar view shows the day's evidence at a glance.
  </Card>

  <Card title="By search + filter" icon="magnifying-glass">
    Full-text search over filenames, descriptions, and your own notes. Filter by date range, evidence type, source classification (mine / other party / court / professional), or bundle membership.
  </Card>

  <Card title="By bundle" icon="layer-group">
    Curated subsets prepared for a specific use — Annexure JL-1 to your interim affidavit, the disclosure bundle for FDR, the chronology pack for your barrister.
  </Card>
</CardGroup>

## Three sub-surfaces

The Portfolio is more than just a vault. Three sub-surfaces handle different jobs:

<CardGroup cols={2}>
  <Card title="The vault itself" icon="vault" href="/evidence/uploading-and-organising">
    `/evidence-portfolio` — upload, tag, search. The day-to-day surface where new evidence lands.
  </Card>

  <Card title="Stage Review" icon="layer-group" href="/evidence/stage-review">
    `/evidence-portfolio/stage-review` — one-card-at-a-time review of AI proposals about which stage of court each piece is most relevant to. Keyboard shortcuts (A / C / S / R) for fast triage.
  </Card>

  <Card title="Court Readiness Matrix" icon="grid-2" href="/evidence/court-readiness-matrix">
    `/evidence-portfolio/court-readiness` — three-tier dashboard showing readiness percentage for each court stage. Spot the gaps before the other side does.
  </Card>

  <Card title="Bundles for court" icon="folder-open" href="/evidence/bundles-for-court">
    Curate a subset of evidence for a specific filing — affidavit annexures, FDR disclosure bundle, court-book exhibits.
  </Card>
</CardGroup>

## How the platform handles privacy

Evidence in family-law matters is some of the most sensitive data a person will ever store anywhere — children's medical records, family-violence history, intimate communications, financial detail. The platform treats it accordingly:

* **Encrypted at rest and in transit.** Storage is in Australian-jurisdiction data centres (see [Privacy and data](/account/privacy-and-data) for full detail).
* **Access scoped to you alone.** RYTZ staff cannot read your evidence. The AI assistant can be invoked over selected items (see [How the AI assistant works](/ai/how-the-chat-works) for the boundary), but not over the vault by default.
* **Lawyer access only when you grant it.** If you engage a family-law solicitor through RYTZ's professional collaboration surface (a future feature on the consumer app), access is per-document, time-bound, and revocable.
* **Export is yours.** You own your evidence. Bulk export to ZIP is available under [Account → Privacy and data](/account/privacy-and-data).

<Warning>
  **Family-violence note.** If you are in a family-violence situation and you are concerned about your device being monitored, take care with what you photograph and where you store it. The platform's safe-exit feature (a one-click "leave site without trace" button) is enabled by default for users with family-violence disclosed in their case file. See [Setting up your case file](/getting-started/setting-up-your-case-file) for the disclosure step.
</Warning>

## Where this connects to the rest of the platform

Evidence in the Portfolio flows into the rest of the platform:

* **Affidavits** (see [Prepare an affidavit](/affidavits/overview)) reference Portfolio items as annexures. Annexure labels (JL-1, JL-2, ...) are auto-assigned in the order they're cited.
* **Settlement Planner** pulls financial documents (bank statements, super statements, valuations) when you import them through the [document import wizard](/settlement-planner/document-import-wizard).
* **Master Case File** (see [Master Case File overview](/master-case-file/overview)) auto-includes high-relevance evidence in its synthesised case document.
* **AI assistant** can be asked questions like "what evidence do I have about Sarah's ex's drinking around the children?" and will surface relevant items from the Portfolio (when you grant per-conversation access).

## What's next

<CardGroup cols={2}>
  <Card title="Uploading + organising" icon="upload" href="/evidence/uploading-and-organising">
    The day-to-day flow — capture, tag, find later.
  </Card>

  <Card title="Stage Review" icon="layer-group" href="/evidence/stage-review">
    AI-proposed stage assignment with one-card-at-a-time triage.
  </Card>

  <Card title="Court Readiness Matrix" icon="grid-2" href="/evidence/court-readiness-matrix">
    See your readiness percentage by court stage at a glance.
  </Card>

  <Card title="Bundles for court" icon="folder-open" href="/evidence/bundles-for-court">
    Curate evidence subsets for a specific filing or hearing.
  </Card>
</CardGroup>