Excerpt:
Justice is supposed to be blind. Yet judges have long blinded themselves to the grave injustices of a court system so complex and costly that it often bankrupts feuding parents and sells their children short.
Now, one judge is trying to open our eyes to the ossified state of our family court system with a public call for “dramatic” change. Presiding over the opening of the courts this week, Chief Justice Warren Winkler told the province’s assembled legal brain trust — its top judges, lawyers, and Attorney General Chris Bentley — that the status quo is utterly dysfunctional. Tinkering with a broken system will not make it right again....
His call for an alternative dispute resolution system follows a series of articles by the Star last year describing the human heartbreak and financial cost of an unwieldy system that stokes grievances rather than resolving them. Facing prohibitive legal fees, many parents opt to represent themselves in court, with often disastrous consequences for their cases — and the for the province’s caseload (with 313,000 family law hearings in Ontario’s top courts last year).
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