Conciliation and the New Zealand Family Court: lessons for English law reformers

Legal Studies ◽  
1996 ◽  
Vol 16 (3) ◽  
pp. 298-324
Author(s):  
Caroline Bridge
Keyword(s):  
New Zealand ◽  
Self Determination ◽  
Family Court ◽  
The Third ◽  
Court Judge ◽  
The Family ◽  
English Law

Conciliation has formed an integral part of the New Zealand Family Court’s management of family disputes since 1980. The Family Court is a tiered structure, designed to encourage the parties to resolve their own disputes by providing opportunities for conciliation within a statutory process. The first two tiers, counselling and judicial mediation, are procedures intended to empower the parties, enable self-determination, and encourage a conciliatory rather than combative attitude towards both each other and the dispute. Consequently, the parties are compulsorily channelled through the conciliation tiers of the court even if the ultimate goal of one of them is a court room battle. The hope is that the third tier, adjudication by a Family Court judge in the Family Court, will be avoided.

Child Participation: Overcoming Disparity between New Zealand’s Family Court and Out-of-court Dispute Resolution Processes

2017 ◽  
Vol 25 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 658-671 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicola Taylor
Keyword(s):  
New Zealand ◽  
Dispute Resolution ◽  
Justice System ◽  
Research Evidence ◽  
Family Court ◽  
New Family ◽  
The Family ◽  
Major Reform ◽  
Children’S Views ◽  
Resolution Processes

This article considers children’s right to participate in the context of private law disputes concerning their post-separation, day-to-day care and contact arrangements. In New Zealand the approach to ascertaining children’s views has been both long-standing and systematic for contested proceedings within the Family Court (via children’s legal representatives and judicial meetings with children). However, major reform of the family justice system in 2014 shifted the emphasis to new out-of-court processes for resolving post-separation parenting arrangements. The reforms were disappointingly silent on the issue of children’s participation in the new Family Dispute Resolution services, particularly mediation. A disparity has thus arisen between opportunities for children’s engagement in New Zealand’s in-court and out-of-court dispute resolution processes. Research evidence and international developments in Australia and England and Wales are reviewed for the guidance they can offer in remedying this in New Zealand and elsewhere.

scholarly journals Private Settlement - Public Justice?

2000 ◽  
Vol 31 (1) ◽  
pp. 225 ◽  
Author(s):  
P D Mahoney
Keyword(s):  
New Zealand ◽  
Dispute Resolution ◽  
Family Court ◽  
Court Judge ◽  
Pros And Cons

In this paper, the Principal Family Court Judge discusses the pros and cons of "court-annexed" mediation services. He notes some powerful constitutional arguments against such forms of mediation but eventually agrees with the stand taken by the Australian and New Zealand Council of Chief Justices in support of a fully serviced court-based system. This paper was delivered at the New Zealand Institute for Dispute Resolution Colloquium held on 29 June 1999.

scholarly journals "Any evidence" in the Family Court

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Caroline Hickman
Keyword(s):  
New Zealand ◽  
Family Law ◽  
Family Court ◽  
Judicial Discretion ◽  
The Family ◽  
Court Process

<p>This dissertation examines the origins and justification for the “any evidence” rule which has been a feature of New Zealand family law for many years. The rule provides judicial discretion to admit evidence in the Family Court which would be otherwise inadmissible. Its ongoing value has never been closely examined, although the rule has frequently been criticised.  Selected cases have been examined to determine if reliance on the Evidence Act without the “any evidence” rule would have the deleterious outcomes contemplated. Analysis has shown that the rule has very little use and conversely, that the detriment caused by the rule is greater than the harm it was designed to remedy.  Repeal and reform options are considered to better achieve the specific purposes of the various family law statutes as well as improve the integrity of the Family Court process overall.</p>

‘Turning up the volume’: Increasing respect for the wishes and feelings of women with intellectual impairment in decisions about their reproductive rights in England and New Zealand

2021 ◽  
pp. 096853322110447
Author(s):  
Joanna M Manning
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
New Zealand ◽  
Case Law ◽  
Best Interests ◽  
Family Court ◽  
Persons With Disabilities ◽  
Court Judge ◽  
Mental Capacity Act 2005 ◽  
The Will ◽  
Mental Capacity Act

In 2004 a New Zealand Family Court Judge ordered that two extremely serious and irreversible interventions (termination of pregnancy and sterilization) be carried out on a 29-year-old woman, with mild to moderate intellectual disability, over her strenuous objection. Though her appeal was partially successful, an option which both respected her wishes and feelings and in all likelihood better promoted her best interests was not explored. A decade later, another Family Court judge held that it was in the best interests of a young woman with Down syndrome to be sterilized for contraceptive purposes, in spite of her indication that she might wish to have babies one day. The decisions were made under NZ’s adult guardianship legislation, into which courts have incorporated a best interests principle, which they have interpreted broadly. But, in contrast to the Mental Capacity Act 2005 (MCA), NZ’s statute lacks any requirement for decision-makers to take into account the wishes and feelings of the person with mental impairment. That requirement has been the catalyst for a more-empathetic, person-centric interpretation in English case law. Further reform to the MCA is advocated for, which would give formal primacy to P’s wishes and feelings through presumptions or special phrases, as well as requiring a reasoned justification for departing from them. The Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities goes even further: the article 12 right to legal capacity requires respect for the ‘will and preferences’ of people with mental impairments and controversially, according to the UN Committee’s interpretation, requires the replacement of substitute decision-making regimes based on best interests with supported decision-making frameworks based on a person’s will and preferences.

scholarly journals "Any evidence" in the Family Court

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Caroline Hickman
Keyword(s):  
New Zealand ◽  
Family Law ◽  
Family Court ◽  
Judicial Discretion ◽  
The Family ◽  
Court Process

<p>This dissertation examines the origins and justification for the “any evidence” rule which has been a feature of New Zealand family law for many years. The rule provides judicial discretion to admit evidence in the Family Court which would be otherwise inadmissible. Its ongoing value has never been closely examined, although the rule has frequently been criticised.  Selected cases have been examined to determine if reliance on the Evidence Act without the “any evidence” rule would have the deleterious outcomes contemplated. Analysis has shown that the rule has very little use and conversely, that the detriment caused by the rule is greater than the harm it was designed to remedy.  Repeal and reform options are considered to better achieve the specific purposes of the various family law statutes as well as improve the integrity of the Family Court process overall.</p>

Myths and Realities in the Search for Juvenile Justice: A Statement by The Honorable Justine Wise Polier

1974 ◽  
Vol 44 (1) ◽  
pp. 112-124 ◽  
Author(s):  
Justine Wise Polier
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Juvenile Justice ◽  
New York State ◽  
Advisory Board ◽  
Family Court ◽  
New York School ◽  
Court Judge ◽  
The Family ◽  
Crime And Delinquency ◽  
The Right

The Honorable Justine Wise Polier retired from the bench of New York's Family Court in 1973 to head the Children's Defense Fund's program in juvenile justice,emphasizing the right to care and treatment. She has served as a judge since 1935. During those years, her work led her to become deeply involved in the lives of children in trouble. She has served as founder and president of the Wiltwyck School for Boys, member of the New York State Citizen's Committee for Children, the Mayor's Committee on Foster Care, the Advisory Board of the League School for Seriously Disturbed Children, the Board of the New York School for Nursery Years, the Policy Committee of the Office of Children's Services of the Judicial Conference, and the Judicial Advisory Committee on Crime and Delinquency, among others. Juvenile Justice Confounded was written under her chairwomanship of the Committee on Mental Health Services in the Family Court. Judge Polier is also the author of books and studies on the law and social welfare including Everyone's Children,Nobody's Child.

THE FACTORS OF CAREER SELF-DETERMINATION OF STUDENTS OF HIGHER EDUCATION INSTITUTIONS

2019 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 9-20
Author(s):  
Inna Yeung
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
Higher Education Institutions ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Young Person ◽  
Self Determination ◽  
Full Time ◽  
Actual Problem ◽  
The Third ◽  
The Right

Choice of profession is a social phenomenon that every person has to face in life. Numerous studies convince us that not only the well-being of a person depends on the chosen work, but also his attitude to himself and life in general, therefore, the right and timely professional choice is very important. Research about factors of career self-determination of students of higher education institutions in Ukraine shows that self-determination is an important factor in the socialization of young person, and the factors that determine students' career choices become an actual problem of nowadays. The present study involved full-time and part-time students of Institute of Philology and Mass Communications of Open International University of Human Development "Ukraine" in order to examine the factors of career self-determination of students of higher education institutions (N=189). Diagnostic factors of career self-determination of students studying in the third and fourth year were carried out using the author's questionnaire. Processing of obtained data was carried out using the Excel 2010 program; factorial and comparative analysis were applied. Results of the study showed that initial stage of career self-determination falls down on the third and fourth studying year at the university, when an image of future career and career orientations begin to form. At the same time, the content of career self-determination in this period is contradictory and uncertain, therefore, the implementation of pedagogical support of this process among students is effective.

The Formation of a Budding Man Alone: The God Boy (Murray Reece, 1976)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alistair Fox
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
New Zealand ◽  
Religious Beliefs ◽  
Coming Of Age ◽  
World War ◽  
Value System ◽  
Feature Films ◽  
The Family

This chapter analyses the earliest of the New Zealand coming-of-age feature films, an adaptation of Ian Cross’s novel The God Boy, to demonstrate how it addresses the destructive impact on a child of the puritanical value-system that had dominated Pākehā (white) society through much of the twentieth century, being particularly strong during the interwar years, and the decade immediately following World War II. The discussion explores how dysfunction within the family and repressive religious beliefs eventuate in pressures that cause Jimmy, the protagonist, to act out transgressively, and then to turn inwards to seek refuge in the form of self-containment that makes him a prototype of the Man Alone figure that is ubiquitous in New Zealand fiction.

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