Judiciary consults stakeholders on family court rules

The Ju­di­cia­ry of Trinidad and To­ba­go has con­sult­ed ju­di­cial of­fi­cers, le­gal prac­ti­tion­ers and jus­tice-sec­tor stake­hold­ers on ways to im­prove the ad­min­is­tra­tion of fam­i­ly jus­tice and en­sure the time­ly res­o­lu­tion of cas­es.

The con­sul­ta­tion, host­ed by the Ju­di­cial Ed­u­ca­tion In­sti­tute of Trinidad and To­ba­go (JEITT) on Fri­day, fo­cused on the prac­ti­cal ap­pli­ca­tion of the Fam­i­ly Pro­ceed­ings Rules 1998 and po­ten­tial ar­eas for pro­ce­dur­al re­form.

Dis­cus­sions cen­tred on chal­lenges af­fect­ing the man­age­ment of fam­i­ly mat­ters, the ef­fec­tive­ness of ex­ist­ing pro­ce­dures and mea­sures to make court process­es fair­er and more ef­fi­cient.

Chief Jus­tice Ron­nie Boodoos­ingh un­der­scored the im­por­tance of prac­ti­cal, so­lu­tions-ori­ent­ed dis­cus­sions aimed at im­prov­ing ser­vice de­liv­ery to court users and en­hanc­ing court per­for­mance.

A cen­tral fo­cus of the con­sul­ta­tion was the over­rid­ing ob­jec­tive of the Rules, which re­quires courts to deal with fam­i­ly mat­ters just­ly, with the wel­fare of chil­dren be­ing the first and para­mount con­sid­er­a­tion in pro­ceed­ings af­fect­ing them.

The en­gage­ment brought to­geth­er Jus­tices of Ap­peal, High Court judges, oth­er ju­di­cial of­fi­cers, mem­bers of the Court Ad­min­is­tra­tive Unit and rep­re­sen­ta­tives from sev­er­al jus­tice-sec­tor in­sti­tu­tions.

These in­clud­ed the Min­istry of Jus­tice, the Chil­dren's Au­thor­i­ty of Trinidad and To­ba­go, the Law As­so­ci­a­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go, Hugh Wood­ing Law School, the Fac­ul­ty of Law, the Trinidad and To­ba­go Fam­i­ly Law As­so­ci­a­tion and oth­er law as­so­ci­a­tions.

Par­tic­i­pants shared prac­ti­cal ex­pe­ri­ences and iden­ti­fied pro­ce­dur­al and ad­min­is­tra­tive chal­lenges that could af­fect the fair and time­ly han­dling of fam­i­ly pro­ceed­ings.

The con­sul­ta­tion al­so pro­vid­ed an op­por­tu­ni­ty to ex­plore re­forms that could strength­en the de­liv­ery of fam­i­ly jus­tice while safe­guard­ing the in­ter­ests of chil­dren and oth­er court users.

The Ju­di­cia­ry said the en­gage­ment formed part of its on­go­ing com­mit­ment to stake­hold­er con­sul­ta­tion and im­prov­ing the ad­min­is­tra­tion of jus­tice.

The dis­cus­sions are ex­pect­ed to help iden­ti­fy op­por­tu­ni­ties to en­hance the ap­pli­ca­tion of the Rules, strength­en court process­es and im­prove out­comes for fam­i­lies nav­i­gat­ing the jus­tice sys­tem.