Family Courts Bill 2022: does it have any real time limits and serious penalties for breaking them?

Egregiously long delays are built into the family law legal system, and they do nothing but add to the stress, and much more. The fake 10-day, 14-day, etc "deadlines", the joke "Motion of Default" which takes at least three months to get and therefore gives the delaying side in effect an extended 3-month-plus deadline - when they produce the documents the day before that Motion of Default hearing, and start the same delaying tactics for the next stage, and so on and so forth. And that's before all the incredible postponements, fake court dates, provisional lists, four months' holidays per year when the courts' system is closed down, and so much else which all add to the stress.

At most, the party delaying everything gets a token "costs" against if they repeat this a few times (but usually only a threat of costs). Meanwhile, the person who is diligently getting all their documents in on time has to spend thousands of euro to push the whole case forward because the other side wants to delay.

How is this deadline-free family law courts system permitted to exist in Ireland in 2023? It 100% promotes abuse by allowing one party to hold up the other party getting on with their life - not to mention the things which the children must continue witnessing in the family home. I've been told that other areas of law have serious penalties for such deliberate delaying tactics, but Irish family law does not. What on earth is the justification for that given than people in the family courts often need more protection from abuse? Does any other branch of law in the Irish State actively reward people who deliberately stretch everything out?

Moreover, is Helen McEntee's current Family Courts Bill 2022 going to in any way, shape or form put strict, enforced, time deadlines on each stage of the divorce process? If so, what are those time limits? If not, why not? How many of the new judges which are supposedly going to be appointed will be appointed to the family courts, and when will these appointments be?

Peregrinus

Matters like the time limits for completing various stages of court proceedings are not dealt with in Acts of the Oireachtas, but in the Rules of Court. So there's nothing about this in the 2022 Bill, but you wouldn't expect there to be.

I think you have been misinformed about other areas of law having penalties for delay in progressing proceedings. All areas of law, including family law, have the potential for penalties of that kind but they are not often imposed, not least because of the difficult in proving in any particular case that missed deadlines are a deliberate tactic. Plus in the family law context there is the added complication that imposing financial penalties on one party simply reduces the pool of assets available for division between the parties, to the disadvantage of both of them.

The usual way of putting manners on a tardy litigant is to seek an order obliging them to take the next step in the proceedings by a given date, failing which their proceedings will proceed to trial and judgment on the basis of what has already been filed. But the courts are reluctant to allow things like missed deadlines to determine the outcome of a case; people have a right of access to the courts, and that extends to the courts trying to determine the disputes before them on the basis of the substantial and relevant considerations, and not on the basis of compliance with court procedures.

All of which just underlines the general unsuitability of the courts for resolving family disputes. To some extent this is inevitable; the fundamental issues that underlie any marriage breakdown are not legal issues at all, and the courts can't fix them; all they can do is mop up the damage. Hence the focus on alternative, and less confrontational mechanisms - agreement, mediation. They don't always work but, when they do, they tend to work much more satisfactorily than court proceedings.

feelings

how else are solicitors supposed to milk you for every €???