Impact of Reforms at Family Justice Courts

6 Mr Low Thia Khiang asked the Minister for Law (a) whether he can provide an update on the implementation of the Family Justice Committee's reforms; (b) whether there has been an assessment of the outcomes of the cases at the Family Justice Courts after the introduction of the various reforms; (c) whether further enhancements can be made to the Court processes to encourage families to heal and reconcile; and (d) how can the family law practitioners be part of this change.

The Senior Minister of State for Law (Ms Indranee Rajah) (for the Minister for Law): Our family justice system aims to resolve family disputes through mediation as far as possible and with litigation only as the last resort.

Many cases that go through the family justice system are divorce proceedings and ancillary issues, such as the division of matrimonial assets and issues relating to the custody, care and control of the children. The Court process in dealing with these issues should be affordable and should not make it more painful for the families involved. In particular, we should see to the interests of the children and protect them during the proceedings to the extent possible.

With these aims in mind, the Committee for Family Justice was convened in 2013, which made recommendations to introduce less adversarial and more child-centric approaches in family proceedings and to also improve community support outside of the Court system.

The work of the Committee led to the enactment of the Family Justice Act and the establishment of the Family Justice Courts on 1 October 2014. Pursuant to the Committee's recommendations, the following reforms were implemented in the Family Justice Courts.

First, a judge-led approach. This was adopted and places the judge in the centre of the Court process and allows the judge to guide and direct the proceedings. This reduces acrimony between parties and is an improvement over the previous purely adversarial approach towards resolving family disputes.

Second, case management policies and processes have been enhanced in the Family Justice Courts. The docketing system ensures that a single judge manages the case early in the proceedings to its conclusion. This helps to ensure that the judicial officer adjudicating the dispute is familiar with, and sensitive to, the issues and parties involved.

The simplified uncontested divorce track was also implemented to allow parties to apply for the case to be scheduled for an uncontested hearing if there has been agreement on both sides. Cases under the simplified uncontested divorce track are resolved faster. Previously, the median time taken for such cases to obtain Interim Judgment was 53 days. This was shortened to about 20 days under the simplified uncontested divorce track.

Third, child representatives are now appointed by the Court if it is in the best interests of the child to do so. This usually occurs in high conflict matters where parties cannot agree on the care arrangements of the child. There are currently 26 trained child representatives, and there have since been 40 cases where child representatives were appointed. These child representatives represent the voice of the child in family disputes and present an objective assessment of the care arrangements which would be in the best interests of the child.

Fourth, aside from the Court-based initiatives, the Committee also recognised that families should be provided with better assistance and support to resolve their disputes out-of-Court, wherever possible. In this regard, the Committee proposed the establishment of Divorce Support Specialist Agencies to provide specialised services and programmes for divorcing and divorced families. The Ministry of Social and Family Development (MSF) has since established four Divorce Support Specialist Agencies to provide the support and care to such families.

The Family Justice Courts have been established for three years now. Early indications have been positive. The average time taken for divorce cases to be granted Interim Judgment has been reduced from 68.6 days in 2012 to 53.1 days in 2016. Similarly, the average time taken for Final Judgment to be granted has also been reduced from 155.3 days in 2012 to 114.6 days in 2016. We intend to work with the Family Justice Courts to conduct a joint survey of Court users to better understand the Court users' experience of the reforms in the family justice system.

Despite these improvements, certain cases still require an extended time to resolve and with acute acrimony between the parties. In this regard, the Ministry of Law (MinLaw), MSF and the Family Justice Courts have decided to convene a new committee to further enhance the family justice system.

Family lawyers play an important and integral role in these reforms, including how they advise and counsel clients, the manner in which they conduct the cases in Court and their knowledge and familiarity with the social support systems that have been set up to assist families. This was recognised by the Committee for Family Justice which proposed a new Family Law Practitioner accreditation scheme for lawyers who have undergone specialist training. Work is underway to design a specialist family law and multidiscipline training for family lawyers and I look forward to the implementation of this recommendation. We will continue to partner and support our family lawyers to facilitate the effective practice of family law today.

We will continue to make reforms and improve our family justice system to better support and preserve families going through a dispute, through a less adversarial, more efficient and more child-centric approach to family litigation, as well as a robust network of community support.

Mr Speaker: Dr Tan Wu Meng.

Dr Tan Wu Meng (Jurong): I thank the Senior Minister of State for her answer and explanations. I have two supplementary questions. Firstly, how can the Ministry improve public understanding of the importance of attending Court and having representations made, including in family justice cases? I say this because I have met residents in Clementi, some of whom did not attend these hearings and were subsequently distressed when the outcome went against them.

Secondly, I would like to ask the Senior Minister of State if she could elaborate further on how individual lawyers can play a role in helping to build a better and stronger family justice system.

Ms Indranee Rajah: Mr Speaker, I thank the Member for his questions. It is a very pertinent point – attendance in Court. The Court is an important institution and people must understand that Court hearings are to be respected. The Courts and the justice that they dispense underpin our entire societal system, not least in family law cases. So, I would urge anybody who receives a Court summons, whether it be family law or anything else, to give it due attention, due weight and to respect the Court as an institution. Where the document calls for attendance before the Court, it is very important that that person must turn up.

There are sometimes when a person is unable to turn up for various reasons. In this scenario, there are a few options. First, if the person is represented, usually a lawyer will take care of that, and the lawyer can appear on your behalf and you do not have to be there, unless there are certain very specific things, such as your having to give evidence because the trial is ongoing. In that case, clearly, the lawyer cannot be giving evidence on your behalf. You have to be there. But if for some reason you are ill, unwell, have some other really pressing commitment which the Court agrees takes precedence, you can ask the Court for adjournment and the lawyer will do that for you.

But there are many parties who are not represented. For those who are not represented, if for some reason they truly cannot turn up to ask for an adjournment or postponement, they can, at the very minimum, write to the Court in advance of the hearing, and the Court will usually take into account whether or not the reasons for the request for the postponement are good reasons, and they will accommodate if the reasons are valid.

If not, they can also approach their Member of Parliament at the Meet-the-People sessions to write to MinLaw, which will then forward the letter to the Court. At the end of the day, the important thing to remember is that Court proceedings are important and people must appear.

For those who meet the means test, there is also legal aid representation. They can also go to the Law Society Pro Bono Office and there are the legal clinics which are conducted by the Community Development Councils. There is also the Community Justice Centre at the State Courts. So, there is a variety of options. For those who need legal assistance, I would urge them to seek out these options.

On the second question on what role can lawyers play, that is a very good question. That is the reason why we are looking at the Family Law Accreditation Scheme. Family law proceedings are not like other proceedings. It is not like commercial litigation, for example, where what is at stake is really money, by and large. So, even if it is a question of an extra hundred thousand dollars, an extra million dollars, it is still money. But in family proceedings, it is a lot to do with emotions. Very often, it has to do with the impact on the child.

In commercial proceedings, how do you measure win and lose? You measure by how much money you get, the amount of damages. But how do you measure win and lose in litigation proceedings for family cases? Who really wins? Who really loses? You often find that for the parties, winning actually means hurting the other side, taking the other side's assets as much as you can, or preventing the other side from having access to the child. That is how winning and losing are very often measured in family cases.

That should not be the case. The measure for winning and losing in family cases should really be how are you able to disentangle your lives after having been together for a long time, with the least pain possible, and in a way that allows you to move on, emotionally as well as in terms of other arrangements. That should be one measure. The other measure should be how do you do it in a way that least adversely impacts a child?

Once these become your measures, you can begin to see how the training and the skillsets for the lawyers have to be very different. Because in commercial litigation, it is about how you can score the legal points and how you can get the extra money. But here, as a lawyer, you have to counsel your client. If your client is determined to get at the other side by withholding access to the child, that is not in the child's best interest. And the lawyer has to be trained to deal with that.

When I was in practice, I had a case where whenever the children had telephone access to the father, the mother would not allow the children to take the call from the telephone in the living room. She would banish them to the balcony in the kitchen where all the washing and the drying and the clothes were. In their minds, every time they take a call from their father, they have to go out into the balcony and sit out there, like it is not a normal family activity. The children would feel a bit like it was punishment whenever they took a call from their father.

These are things where the lawyer should be able to advise the client and, where necessary, advise them where to go for counselling. If your client is somebody who has been accused of domestic violence, does that person have something wrong with him or her where he or she feels a need to take out his or her anger and frustration on the spouse? That person possibly needs counselling as well. And the lawyer needs to be able to deal with that.

So, it is for this reason that we consider it very important that lawyers have specialist training to deal with family justice. Increasingly, these are not just purely domestic issues. There are more and more marriages which are cross-border these days, so you will then have to deal with issues that will require knowledge of the international conventions that deal with children and cross-border marriages. So, there is also an international aspect.

In short, family law is not just a poor cousin to commercial law. Not by any means. It is a very important area of the law and the lawyers who practice it should become specialist lawyers in their own right.

Mr Speaker: Mr Seah Kian Peng, next question.

Mr Seah Kian Peng (Marine Parade): Mr Speaker, Sir, could I ask a supplementary question to this question?

Mr Speaker: Please proceed.

Mr Seah Kian Peng: Thank you. I would like to ask the Senior Minister of State in particular about the maintenance orders that are meted out by the family Courts. Does the Ministry keep track of whether these are adhered to and, if not, are there ways which we could make it less painful, make it more seamless for those who are supposed to receive the payments but are not receiving them?

Ms Indranee Rajah: We do not have the specific figures of which orders are complied with and which are not because, obviously, for the ones which are complied with, the parties will not come back to the Court. But you will know whether the rates of compliance are steady or going up or falling by the number of applications for enforcement with the Courts. We are able to track those, although I do not have the specific figures with me right now.

That said, there are instances where enforcement is difficult and frustrating, particularly when the spouse who has to pay maintenance either hides assets or it is difficult to find. This is something we are studying and looking to see how we can make more seamless.