Ask anyone who has been in CT’s family courts what happens when they go to court. Almost without fail, that person will say “I waited in the hallway” for most of the day.
Most of my clients have to take the day off from work to attend family court. Early arrival is usually imperative so that way a party can get his name written in on the top of the sign up sheet.
Every person with a motion must first meet with a family relations counselor. Before seeing a judge a party must first see Family Relations.
Many matters are resolved at this point. The Family mediation staff is excellent. The problem is that there are too few mediators, too many cases, and too little time.
If a case isn’t resolved it then gets assigned to a hearing before a judge on another day or the parties wait for an available judge. Sometimes it’s not until late in the day before a party gets before a judge.
For the life of me, I’ve never been able to understand why parties didn’t have set times to appear before family relations. Scheduling mediations with family relations at specified times would prevent people taking time off from work to sit in a hallway.
If parties are unable to come to an agreement then the matter should be scheduled for a court hearing at a later date.
Such a system would also benefit Connecticut businesses who now lose full days of work from their employees.
This idea is not without problems. The largest problem would be scheduling times. It’s hard to get 4 or 5 people together on short notice. Implementing this idea would require radical changes to the way things operate. Anytime major changes are made – problems are bound to arise.
But that shouldn’t stop the Judicial Branch from trying such a system. In fact the foreclosure mediation program specifically schedules mediation times.
The less time we all spend waiting in hallways the better.