“Without notice” Family Court judicial time – every application takes 16 minutes & 48 seconds
Just thought sharing this,
Every Without notice aplication will take on average 16 mins for a judge to decide ? Of course everytime new judge and they don’t have any background of the manipulations and alienation history.
13,543 applications for the year and numbers increasing.
https://www.lawsociety.org.nz/news-and-communications/latest-news/news/without-notice-family-court-judicial-time-316-hoursmonth
“Without notice” Family Court judicial time 316 hours/month
15 June 2016
Judges together spent an average of 316 hours a month dealing with “without notice” applications in the Family Court in the year to 30 April 2016.
With a total of 13,543 such applications over the year https://aucasinosonline.com/nz/, this means that Family Court Judges spent an average of 16 minutes and 48 seconds on each application.
Justice Minister Amy Adams has released information on judicial time spent on “without notice” applications in response to a parliamentary question from Labour MP Louisa Wall.
Releasing the information, Ms Adams said judicial time dealing with “without notice” applications has been interpreted as the hours spent on e-Duty events by Judges.
Judicial time spent dealing with “without notice” applications in Family Court
Event Month Guardianship (Care of Children Act) All Family Court case types
Judicial time (hours) Events Judicial time (hours) Events
May 2015 172 687 297 1193
June 2015 149 580 263 1008
July 2015 177 663 311 1131
August 2015 164 621 297 1110
September 2015 189 695 374 1183
October 2015 174 659 298 1150
November 2015 160 646 273 1107
December 2015 169 653 293 1136
January 2016 165 576 259 918
February 2016 332 760 465 1235
March 2016 208 755 376 1283
April 2016 164 630 286 1089
Total 2223 7925 3792 13543
Average/Month 185.3 660.4 316.0 1128.6
With Out Notice Applications attract Legal Aid.
With out notice applications are supposed to be used in matters of urgencey and or danger.
There is a protocol and process around this.
What if an underhanded lawyer miss uses this process?
The judge still has to deal with the application.
It is not the judges job to dissapline the lawyer, its, yep, you got it, those honest caring folks at the law society.
Now when they rule in favour of their member you an escallate your complaint to the LCRO.
His webb site says we are unable to meet our statutory obligations and have still not dealt with complaints from 2013.
Guess who funds his office – The Law Society, get it? Yep.
Hows you confidence in the system?
When dad walks off and leaves, yep mummy’s new boyfriend is free to abuse away.
Who can blame the dad for giving up on this, not the children, but the process.
Comment by paul smith — Mon 20th June 2016 @ 1:06 am
These days it is even worse.
On Notice applications are supposed to be made by individuals without the assistance of lawyers. Judith Collin’s reforms encourage parties to work together, to resolve matters by mediation without the use lawyers. The only way for lawyers to get assured engagement and coat-tail ride into proceedings is to apply without notice. Surprise surprise now 95% of applications are urgent and made without notice. As Paul indicates a very predictable and self-serving response from the legal profession as a whole.
Comment by Allan Harvey — Mon 20th June 2016 @ 6:19 pm
With Out Notice applications are supposed to be used in cases of emergency and or urgency.
The process seems to be lawyer drafts application and submits it to the e judge who makes directions. Lets say its the mother’s application, the father gets no notice of what has happened until directions arrive, perhaps severing his relationship with his children.
Imagine a scenario where the father had shared care for six years, only to wake up and find that this was over.
The Judge was her honor judge Ulrich, the mother’s lawyer Kathleen Byrne of Harrison Byrne. Her honor had been asked to recuse a previous hearing.
The father was represented (eventually) by a senior barrister (with integrity, a passion and belief for his profession) who sits on a standards committee, Ms Byrne had a conversation with the father’s lawyer the day prior to the application but did not mention the forthcoming application.
Ms Byrne liaised directly with the father and bypassed his counsel (the next day)
Ms Byrne for the mother had applied to the court twice before to have the children placed in the care of the mother 6 months prior and a year before that.
Counsel for the children also of Harrison Byrne (feeling confident about the system guys?) had submitted on each occasion prior that this would be a disaster for these children. (we should not consider that this was a noble effort on behalf of CFC, there may well be several things that he did and did not do which had very detrimental outcomes for the children (his clients), the father and potentially the court)
A new CFC was appointed and reported to the court re the children’s views on not seeing their father for 8 weeks. Both children explained that they were sad and angry at not having seen their father for this time.
This was totally predictable.
Perhaps it can be said that the actions of the Legal Aid Jockey and her honer made the children sad and angry.
The mother, well in this instance she had been associated with bikees, gave evidence to same.
They come to my house.
A dead body had already been found hanging in her garage by the children.
She appeared to have serious drug problems.
8 gang members were arrested and charged with serious drug offences (operation fantail) 7 months after her evidence in 2013 (before her honor judge Ulrich)
Did the court/police/original CFC do a deal with the mother for her cooperation we might ask?
What did they do to the father to ensure some leverage over him for his silence over this? Perhaps nothing, how likely is that? Perhaps they took his children off him, may be more?
The point here is that;
Knowing the outcome for the children,(submitted twice) Byrne and her honor judge Ulrich carried on and removed the children from the father’s care, for nothing (based on the CFC report)after the 13 hearings it took to achieve shared care. Shared care gone, no hearing for the father.
Were the best interests of the children served?
Is sad and angry children the desired outcome for them?
Will the Law Society discipline inappropriate use of the with out notice application? What do you think?
The Legal Complaints Review Office has commented on its web site that they are dealing with complaints of 2013 – they are under resourced.
Who funds them?
In a large part its the Law Society.
Feeling confident fathers?
Questions
Do officers of the court (perhaps in conjunction with the police) do deals to get something unrelated to the children’s well being?
If so how would you feel about your child’s well being being and their relationship with you used as a bargaining chip?
Who should discipline miss use of the with out notice application?
Should it be the Court or the Law Society, if its the Law Society are you confident that will happen?
Should the LCRO be independent of the Law Society? (not funded by them in any way for example)
Is this seemingly overuse of the with out notice application intended (behind the scenes) to deal with Family Court applications quickly?
Is it being used as a means of self serving lawyers getting on the gravy train again?
If so is this good for the court reputation and purpose?
Should directions established after 13 hearings 3 of which were substantive be removed/reversed at the stroke of a pen with no opportunity to give evidence?
If so, why have any hearings at all, why bother, does this make a mockery of all of the previous hearings, paper, gavel banging and bullshit? You could be planning a holiday with your children only to find (while you were sleeping or at work) they won’t be coming – as though you have had no history with them at all. You, your opinion, view does not count because you don’t get a chance to give it. All the expert report writers evidence, court effort of previous judges (much of it good for the children) gone. Perhaps they might as well burn the file and start again.
Will the mother’s new boyfriend (perhaps the bikee who visits) be good for your child?
Will your child become a statistic of abuse at the hands of mummies new intimate partner?
At what point do good and ok father’s get encouraged, rather than be encouraged (by actions) to bugger off?
If they bugger off will mummy eventually go to big buddies for a male mentor for their child or will the new mentor be some clown with a record and a glass pipe?
Perhaps the best avenue is to hope she does enroll with big buddies (a worthy cause) and get to be your own child’s big buddy. Until the next with out notice application that is.
Comment by paul smith — Wed 22nd June 2016 @ 12:08 pm
Hi all, I have only just found this site and stumbled across this post. I would like to share a wee snippet of my story (my childrens story). I am 31 years old with 3 children between 6 and 10 years old. 2 years ago I applied to the courts for custody of my children on the without notice process,with meth, heavy alcohol abuse and strange unsavory men around my children day in and day out. I had a substantial amount of undeniable evidence along with a lot of witnesses. However I was denied and put through the on notice process. 12 months and a major struggle to maintain contact (mothers doing) later I was informed by a judge at the end of a 2 day hearing that all of my undeniable evidence was now historical and the children were to remain in day to day care of their mother. Now 18 months on from that I re-applied to the courts on the without notice process as the mothers home had been raided for selling meth and she had gone on the run. I was once again denied and placed on the on notice track, despite my concerns that the childrens mother was on the run from police, off her face and knew that I had the children. It took 4 months to get as far as a directions conference where the CFC convinced the mother and the judge to grant me day to day care. Ironic part is we ended up with the same CFC and Judge as the first time around. Neither of whom seemed to have any regrets about how things ended up after round 1. Might I also mention that I made multiple calls to CYF between court cases one of which was in regards to the Armed Offenders Squad being call out to the mothers property a couple of Months after she was granted day to day care. Fortunately for the children I had picked them up 40mins prior so they could attend my wedding to their step mother (who is amazing I will add). In response to this call CYF told me that it wouldn’t be recorded as a report of concern as the children weren’t there. Any way I just wanted to get that out and I hope it goes towards evidence of a lazy court system and what I would consider an extreme bias towards mothers.
Comment by Matt — Mon 15th August 2016 @ 9:12 pm
It’s easy to understand why people have written that:
This must be part of a wider plan to “dumb down society” or to ensure that a sector is constantly, under achieves, in and out of institutions, I. Trouble with the police and in need of A LAWYER FOR THE REST OF THEIR LIVES.
Judges were lawyers before they were judges Matt how can this hit happen by accident and incompetence – it just can’t.
Have you considered tha this was simply a predetermined outcome ? Eg put the father in a holding pattern, keep him keen ( because the children might need him) and we will try to repair mummy. Mummy is a bikee nut who hasn’t shown any interest in the children really but she is after all MUMMY and we hope these children will be disadvantaged (although we dont say it but its obvious) and end up in the police, court system needing lawyers and judges. So if we can then remove the father, job done, kids fucked up and more work for the future.
This is clearly a cynical view but Actions and outcomes speak louder then words.
What was the outcome again was it “dad got fucked around and gave up” OH Yea, in 2001 20,000 children’s year lost their father due to the process called the Family Court Process.
Comment by Simon grant — Mon 19th December 2016 @ 12:34 am