Canada: "It's time to blow up Divorce Court"

Article here. Excerpt:

'Ontario Chief Justice Warren recently recommended “dramatic” changes to the family law justice system that would deny litigants access to the courts if they didn’t go through mediation or arbitration first.

“(O)nly in the event that the alternative dispute resolution process is unsuccessful would access to the costly, time-consuming, adversarial and sometimes acrimonious court process be available to litigants” Justice Winkler said earlier this month in a speech marking the opening of Ontario courts for the current session.

Apparently fine-tuning the system is of little value and a new approach, “a fresh conceptual approach,” is required.

But a report on family law by the Law Commission of Ontario questioned the effectiveness of mediation. It’s no big surprise that our family justice system was found to be lacking, indeed the title of the report refers to our “Broken Family Justice System.”

Apparently mediation isn’t a cure for what ails the system. Mediation only works when both sides want it to work. Of course, mediation can be expensive and not all mediators are effective.
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Instead of more mediation, we need to deal with the high costs of litigation by lowering fees and providing more money to lower-income litigants. Flexible payment plans would also be nice.

So what’s the answer: More mediation, more money or dealing with the high costs of litigation? What if it’s none of the above?

If we recognize that the current system is costly, time-consuming and often acrimonious, why don’t we come to the obvious conclusion? Perhaps we need to blow up the system and build a new, improved system from the ground up. What better place to start than with our cherished adversarial system?'