You might [https://legalaid.bc.ca/legal_aid/howToApply apply to Legal Aid BC] to see if you qualify for free legal representation, but finite public funding for these services is another barrier. Universal legal aid is not a reality in BC. You probably won't qualifyfor help, unless your annual income is below the poverty line and your legal problem is one of the few problems they legal aid will help with. Even thenif you do qualify, you won't get a legal aid lawyer to help you with all of your case, just some of it, and only for a limited amount of time.

Apart from legal aid lawyers, Legal Aid BC also runs several services to connect people to [https://legalaid.bc.ca/legal_aid/familyLegalAdvice family law legal advice]. Although these services are even more limited in terms of the number of hours of advice one can get, and while most are still for low income individuals, individuals you may qualify for these even if they do not you don't qualify for a legal aid lawyer. These programs run under the namesinclude:

There is a vast array of legal information resources, legal clinics, support organizations, online tools and guides, and lower -cost options for retaining hiring legal professionals in BC. But what are they? Where and when do they operate? Whom do they help? The legal help assistance landscape is badly fragmented. The relative obscurity of some of these services, geographical limitations for some certain services, confusion about eligibility criteria, the lack of an integrated referral process, and the exhaustion many experience from having to retell one's story again and again to different intake workers, all raise barriers to accessing justice.

It's not unusual to have to represent oneself in court. The rates of people without lawyers are as high as 80% in some courts. But being in that position means having to learn about the law and court processes. The laws of BC British Columbia and Canada are published in print and online, and can be found through the provincial government's [https://www.bclaws.gov.bc.ca/ BC Laws website], from the Canadian [https://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/acts/ Department of Justice], or, even better, through the awesome website provided by the [https://canlii.org Canadian Legal Information Institute] (CanLII). Courthouse Libraries BC also operates library branches in courthouses throughout the province, and the librarians who work there are skilled at helping members of the public locate legislation and other forms of legal information.

This wide availability of legal information is a good thing, but the time it takes time to educate yourself is a barrier to justice. Did you do a poor job filling out a legal form because you couldn't make the time to research how to do it well? Did you get a bad outcome as a result? You may have non-negotiable time commitments like kids, a dependent relative, a critical healthcare appointment, or a job that you cannot afford to lose. Your family status, disability, limited economic liberty, etc. — none of this will get you a discount on the It takes time it takes to be an informed self-represented litigant. People , and people sometimes resign themselves to unfair outcomes because they don't have the time to do anything else. The time needed to self-educate and digest information is one of the biggest barriers to justice.

===Complexity of the lawbarriers===While public legal information can help explain court procedures, caselaw case law and legislation, ultimately those the primary materials that must be understood are the legal authorities. Unfortunately, statutes and judgesjudge' s reasons are not written for the average person; they're written by lawyers (or by judges who used to be lawyers) for lawyers. For many, the complexity of intricate court rules and the dense legal language in statutes and caselaw case law leads to confusion or and misunderstanding. Complexity in The complexity of the law undermines onepeople's ability to understand it, and this complexity is a another barrier to justice.

Some of the complexity can be minimized by trustworthy plain language resources that are written for the public. Going to the [https://www.clicklaw.bc.ca Clicklaw website] is a good place to start. That website is a clearing house of legitimate reliable public legal education and information relating to about family law in BCBritish Columbia. There's also:*Legal Aid BC's [https://family.legalaid.bc.ca/ Family Law website],*the Justice Education Society's [https://supremecourtbc.ca/family-law Online Help Guide for Supreme Court family law matters],*the People's Law School's [https://dialalaw.peopleslawschool.ca/category/families/ Dial-A-Law website for families and children], and*BC the Ministry of Attorney General's [https://www2.gov.bc.ca/gov/content/life-events/divorce/family-justice Family Justice website].

If you go to court, you'll want to learn about the BC British Columbia Supreme Court or the BC Provincial Court, and their rulesas well.

If you need to divide property upon separation or get a divorce, you have to go to the BC Supreme Court. This court has rules the size width of the Kelowna phone book, charges fees for almost every step of the process, and has uses more complicated forms. The Supreme Court also has some [https://www.bccourts.ca/supreme_court/self-represented_litigants/ information for self-represented litigants on its website].

The point is that there are a lot of barriers to accessing justice in this province British Columbia — and everywhere else in Canada, really — which include common perceptions about court being the best place to do solve problems and barriers to challenges accessing out-of-court-options, the complexity of the governing legislation and the common law, the complexity of the rules of court, the difficulty of navigating the free or low-cost options that do exist, and, of course, the cost of accessing professionals when needed professionals, whether that's a lawyer or a mediator, parenting coordinator, collaborative family law practitioner, or anothersomeone else altogether.

If we do live in a society governed by the rule of law, and I believe we do, it seems important to advocate for better access to justice for everyone, including the children of separation and divorce and separation.

==An impressive pile of reports...==

Beginning in the 1960s and early 70s, lawyers and judges began to be concerned about the justice system, partly because litigation associated with the civil rights struggle revealed gross inequalities in people's ability to access justice because as a result of their income, their sexual orientation, their gender, their religious inclinations, their ethnicity and the colour of their skin. People protested, wrote lots of important papers about access to justice, and lobbied government for change. As impotent as protests and lobbying can seem today, things did in fact change.

First, we saw the creation of provincial courts throughout the west. (The Provincial Court of British Columbia was founded in 1969.) Second, law schools across Canada began to develop student legal advice programs, through which law students provide provided legal services for free while learning more about the law and their future careers, including the [https://www.lslap.bc.ca Law Students' Legal Advice Program] at the University of British Columbia. We also saw human and civil rights legislation being introduced across Canada, including the [https://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/acts/C-12.3/FullText.html Canadian Bill of Rights] in 1960, BC's the British Columbia ''Human Rights Code'' in 1973, and the ''Canadian Human Rights Act'' in 1977.

These were all important steps, but none of them was the silver bullet that solved the access to justice problem, and the problem continued. And got worse. In hindsight, it seems as if every 15 to 20 years after that point, concern about access to justice would build and build and then crest with a flurry of academic reports, government commissions and law society task forces. A few initiatives would be launched, some with lasting effect, like Canada's pro bono legal advice programs, and concern concerns about access to justice would again subside.

#Professor Julie Macfarlane's landmark study on the experiences of litigants without lawyers, "[https://perma.cc/PV9C-UE4X The National Self-Represented Litigants Project: Identifying and Meeting the Needs of Self-Represented Litigants]",#the report of the Canadian Bar Association's Access to Justice Committee, "[https://perma.cc/7Q94-VTML Equal Justice: Balancing the Scales]",