5,310
edits
Changes
→What else needs to be done?
Very few lawyers make the same assumption today. Most of us assess new cases for certain factors that might make litigation inevitable — including the presence of family violence, the need for orders protecting people or orders protecting property, and applications to move away with children — and our first inclination is often to pick up the phone and call the lawyer on the other side to talk about what's going on rather than filing a claim in court. We have more tools to settle cases these days than ever before, and the fact that less than 5% of family law court cases are resolved by trial seems to reflect the growth of these options.
The bigger problems — the cost of legal services, the complexity of the legislation and case law, the difficulty difficult and adversarial nature of court processes, the chronic delays affecting the court system, and our failure to properly fund alternatives to court — have barely been touched, and I'm not sure that any government is really prepared to tackle these problems head-on.
British Columbians deserve a system that is focused on the short- and long-term wellbeing of children, that is built to minimize the impact of parental conflict on children, that provides the social and economic supports families in crisis need, that includes social and psychological services as well as legal services, and that is fundamentally designed to promote the future functioning of families living apart. We deserve a system in which court is the last resort and collaborative negotiation is the first, and a system in which people don't necessarily have to hire a lawyer to move forward with their lives.
If the justice system is going to change, it's going to change because a lot of people realize that business-as-usual hasn't worked for the last sixty years and that the status quo is not only unacceptable, it's harmful.
If this wikibook is being used to help you through a family law matter, and if you learn things through your process that should be heard by law and policy makers, please consider writing to your MP and your MLA, the federal Minister of Justice, or and the provincial Attorney General. Write letters to your local media, and press for continuing coverage of justice system issues rather than the usual one-and-done article published when something scandalous happens. Get on your local Provincial Court family law committee. Run for election. Become a lawyer, a paralegal, or a mediator. Start community groups and Facebook groups. Volunteer with local advocacy centres, and if there isn't one, create one.
Change can happen, but it's not going to happen until enough people beging to put pressure on the system demand change. What we've got is simply not good enough. Help make a difference!