It is fairly common in this country for government organs to be set up, with the best of intentions, and people appointed to them to get them going, with all modern amenities at their disposal, and to then let them function with hardly ever a peek given to see what results are being achieved. One such organ of the state is the Family Court, where legal minds deliberate daily and at length.

When it was set up the Family Court was touted almost as a social service, and it was going to be the place where efforts would be made to find solutions to the very many serious, heart breaking problems that family disunity, marriage break ups and such other family matters represent.

Has the Family Court lived up to these high-sounding expectations? Has it made society any better? The intention is not to condemn, but the truth is that in one of its areas of operation at least, the Family Court is a dismal failure. People’s hearts sink when they are left with no alternative but to have recourse to it – they know what is in store. The area of operation in question is the hearing of marriage separation cases.

How is one to judge, pardon the pun, the results of this very expensive, erudite but cumbersome and not very effective organ of the state? It is meant to consider people and their marital problems, their feelings, their experiences, with the psychological effects that separation cases have on the children of the parents who are in litigation, and on the psychological impact left also on the parents themselves. The failure is that its considerations take inhumanly long.

That the Family Court is not functioning at all well in this area can be gauged with certainty from the length of time, sometimes many years, which cases take to be settled. No separation case should be allowed to take nine, 10 or more years to be decided. Yet that is often what happens. Small children become adults, parents age in the process, lives become wrecks. The lawyers dealing with these cases make money, even as the judges pocket their salaries. It is only the people involved who suffer so terribly. They suffer even if cases are of short duration; no one can imagine what they go through when cases take so many years. The wonder is that none of the litigants has ever taken the Maltese Family Court to the European Court of Justice, for violation of the right to justice within a reasonable time.

Are more judges needed? That is a nut which would be hard to crack. The courts are already bearing heavily on taxpayers, and on those who resort to them, for the courts’ services do not at all come cheaply to the litigants. But it is known that litigants sometimes prolong their case themselves. A husband, or wife, may create difficulties in testimony. Lawyers resort to delaying tactics. There are spouses who create a smokescreen. Judges are perhaps too lenient.

There have been separation cases which were put off for judgement, only to be re-opened and then to go on and on. It is Jarndyce and Jarndyce all over again, transported to Malta, to litigate on separation, not on legacy.

Something needs to be done, urgently. There should be a mechanism in the Family Court which would ring the alarm bells to those in authority if a separation case takes more than a set period, say three years, to be decided. An independent watchdog could then be brought in to look into the case, see what is causing the delay, and suggest, if not order, a remedy.

Here is an area which the newly-appointed Justice Minister Carmelo Mifsud Bonnici can set his mind to. It needs urgent treatment, and profound consideration. It also needs compassion, empathy with the victims of human failings and of a state organ.