New rules for Family Justice Courts in 2015

SINGAPORE – The Family Justice Courts (FJC) opened today (Oct 1) with Chief Justice Sundaresh Menon announcing that the new Courts will have a new set of Family Justice Rules to work by come next year and that family lawyers could be given accreditation in future.

The new rules will “rather ambitiously” bring together the Rules of Court, the Matrimonial Proceedings Rules and various enhancements to these rules, said CJ Menon in his speech this morning.

As for the accreditation programme, it would let family lawyers operating in the new Family Justice Courts landscape be “properly equipped”, said CJ Menon. “The Family Justice Committee recommended that an accreditation programme be designed for family lawyers. I have asked Justice (Andrew) Phang to chair a committee to look into how this recommendation should be implemented.”

The FJC, which comprises the High Court (Family Division), Family Court and Youth Court, will hear all family-related proceedings. The FJC also intends to let families resolve disputes holistically and with less acrimony and stress, and make sure that the best interest of any children involved is paramount. This will be achieved through a court system that can frame disputes from the perspective of families and the individuals within, through its “unusual breadth of work”.

CJ Menon added that this yields two advantages: Let the FJC see the issues before it within the broader narrative of the family and its history instead of as isolated occurences, and bring the specialist skills of family judges together with enhancements to the litigation process.

Elaborating, he explained that family cases involve parties whose relationships will often have to continue beyond the life of the case and that this must be taken into consideration when the law deals with disputes.

Some of the features of the new FJC include the power to direct parties to attend counselling and/or mediation to resolve their disputes for all cases brought before the Court, for judges to take a more pro-active role in directing the pace and conduct of court proceedings, and the ability to appoint a Child Representative who can provide a voice for children involved in family proceedings. Come January, probate cases will also fall under the FJC.

In its report published in July, the Family Justice Committee said that family lawyers ought to have an accreditation programme so that they are “equipped to practise family law effectively in a manner that is consistent with and promotes the ethos of the new family justice system”.

It added that the training should not be compulsory but that it would be “desirable” for family lawyers to get accreditation and suggested the specialist training comprise “modular courses in non-court dispute resolution methods, the judge-managed approach and less adversarial techniques in family litigation, as well as non-legal aspects of family cases such as the availability of social support services”.