NZ Herald
  • Home
  • Latest news
  • Herald NOW
  • Video
  • New Zealand
  • Sport
  • World
  • Business
  • Entertainment
  • Podcasts
  • Quizzes
  • Opinion
  • Lifestyle
  • Travel
  • Viva
  • Weather

Subscriptions

  • Herald Premium
  • Viva Premium
  • The Listener
  • BusinessDesk

Sections

  • Latest news
  • New Zealand
    • All New Zealand
    • Crime
    • Politics
    • Education
    • Open Justice
    • Scam Update
  • Herald NOW
  • On The Up
  • World
    • All World
    • Australia
    • Asia
    • UK
    • United States
    • Middle East
    • Europe
    • Pacific
  • Business
    • All Business
    • MarketsSharesCurrencyCommoditiesStock TakesCrypto
    • Markets with Madison
    • Media Insider
    • Business analysis
    • Personal financeKiwiSaverInterest ratesTaxInvestment
    • EconomyInflationGDPOfficial cash rateEmployment
    • Small business
    • Business reportsMood of the BoardroomProject AucklandSustainable business and financeCapital markets reportAgribusiness reportInfrastructure reportDynamic business
    • Deloitte Top 200 Awards
    • CompaniesAged CareAgribusinessAirlinesBanking and financeConstructionEnergyFreight and logisticsHealthcareManufacturingMedia and MarketingRetailTelecommunicationsTourism
  • Opinion
    • All Opinion
    • Analysis
    • Editorials
    • Business analysis
    • Premium opinion
    • Letters to the editor
  • Politics
  • Sport
    • All Sport
    • OlympicsParalympics
    • RugbySuper RugbyNPCAll BlacksBlack FernsRugby sevensSchool rugby
    • CricketBlack CapsWhite Ferns
    • Racing
    • NetballSilver Ferns
    • LeagueWarriorsNRL
    • FootballWellington PhoenixAuckland FCAll WhitesFootball FernsEnglish Premier League
    • GolfNZ Open
    • MotorsportFormula 1
    • Boxing
    • UFC
    • BasketballNBABreakersTall BlacksTall Ferns
    • Tennis
    • Cycling
    • Athletics
    • SailingAmerica's CupSailGP
    • Rowing
  • Lifestyle
    • All Lifestyle
    • Viva - Food, fashion & beauty
    • Society Insider
    • Royals
    • Sex & relationships
    • Food & drinkRecipesRecipe collectionsRestaurant reviewsRestaurant bookings
    • Health & wellbeing
    • Fashion & beauty
    • Pets & animals
    • The Selection - Shop the trendsShop fashionShop beautyShop entertainmentShop giftsShop home & living
    • Milford's Investing Place
  • Entertainment
    • All Entertainment
    • TV
    • MoviesMovie reviews
    • MusicMusic reviews
    • BooksBook reviews
    • Culture
    • ReviewsBook reviewsMovie reviewsMusic reviewsRestaurant reviews
  • Travel
    • All Travel
    • News
    • New ZealandNorthlandAucklandWellingtonCanterburyOtago / QueenstownNelson-TasmanBest NZ beaches
    • International travelAustraliaPacific IslandsEuropeUKUSAAfricaAsia
    • Rail holidays
    • Cruise holidays
    • Ski holidays
    • Luxury travel
    • Adventure travel
  • Kāhu Māori news
  • Environment
    • All Environment
    • Our Green Future
  • Talanoa Pacific news
  • Property
    • All Property
    • Property Insider
    • Interest rates tracker
    • Residential property listings
    • Commercial property listings
  • Health
  • Technology
    • All Technology
    • AI
    • Social media
  • Rural
    • All Rural
    • Dairy farming
    • Sheep & beef farming
    • Horticulture
    • Animal health
    • Rural business
    • Rural life
    • Rural technology
    • Opinion
    • Audio & podcasts
  • Weather forecasts
    • All Weather forecasts
    • Kaitaia
    • Whangārei
    • Dargaville
    • Auckland
    • Thames
    • Tauranga
    • Hamilton
    • Whakatāne
    • Rotorua
    • Tokoroa
    • Te Kuiti
    • Taumaranui
    • Taupō
    • Gisborne
    • New Plymouth
    • Napier
    • Hastings
    • Dannevirke
    • Whanganui
    • Palmerston North
    • Levin
    • Paraparaumu
    • Masterton
    • Wellington
    • Motueka
    • Nelson
    • Blenheim
    • Westport
    • Reefton
    • Kaikōura
    • Greymouth
    • Hokitika
    • Christchurch
    • Ashburton
    • Timaru
    • Wānaka
    • Oamaru
    • Queenstown
    • Dunedin
    • Gore
    • Invercargill
  • Meet the journalists
  • Promotions & competitions
  • OneRoof property listings
  • Driven car news

Puzzles & Quizzes

  • Puzzles
    • All Puzzles
    • Sudoku
    • Code Cracker
    • Crosswords
    • Cryptic crossword
    • Wordsearch
  • Quizzes
    • All Quizzes
    • Morning quiz
    • Afternoon quiz
    • Sports quiz

Regions

  • Northland
    • All Northland
    • Far North
    • Kaitaia
    • Kerikeri
    • Kaikohe
    • Bay of Islands
    • Whangarei
    • Dargaville
    • Kaipara
    • Mangawhai
  • Auckland
  • Waikato
    • All Waikato
    • Hamilton
    • Coromandel & Hauraki
    • Matamata & Piako
    • Cambridge
    • Te Awamutu
    • Tokoroa & South Waikato
    • Taupō & Tūrangi
  • Bay of Plenty
    • All Bay of Plenty
    • Katikati
    • Tauranga
    • Mount Maunganui
    • Pāpāmoa
    • Te Puke
    • Whakatāne
  • Rotorua
  • Hawke's Bay
    • All Hawke's Bay
    • Napier
    • Hastings
    • Havelock North
    • Central Hawke's Bay
    • Wairoa
  • Taranaki
    • All Taranaki
    • Stratford
    • New Plymouth
    • Hāwera
  • Manawatū - Whanganui
    • All Manawatū - Whanganui
    • Whanganui
    • Palmerston North
    • Manawatū
    • Tararua
    • Horowhenua
  • Wellington
    • All Wellington
    • Kapiti
    • Wairarapa
    • Upper Hutt
    • Lower Hutt
  • Nelson & Tasman
    • All Nelson & Tasman
    • Motueka
    • Nelson
    • Tasman
  • Marlborough
  • West Coast
  • Canterbury
    • All Canterbury
    • Kaikōura
    • Christchurch
    • Ashburton
    • Timaru
  • Otago
    • All Otago
    • Oamaru
    • Dunedin
    • Balclutha
    • Alexandra
    • Queenstown
    • Wanaka
  • Southland
    • All Southland
    • Invercargill
    • Gore
    • Stewart Island
  • Gisborne

Media

  • Video
    • All Video
    • NZ news video
    • Herald NOW
    • Business news video
    • Politics news video
    • Sport video
    • World news video
    • Lifestyle video
    • Entertainment video
    • Travel video
    • Markets with Madison
    • Kea Kids news
  • Podcasts
    • All Podcasts
    • The Front Page
    • On the Tiles
    • Ask me Anything
    • The Little Things
  • Cartoons
  • Photo galleries
  • Today's Paper - E-editions
  • Photo sales
  • Classifieds

NZME Network

  • Advertise with NZME
  • OneRoof
  • Driven Car Guide
  • BusinessDesk
  • Newstalk ZB
  • Sunlive
  • ZM
  • The Hits
  • Coast
  • Radio Hauraki
  • The Alternative Commentary Collective
  • Gold
  • Flava
  • iHeart Radio
  • Hokonui
  • Radio Wanaka
  • iHeartCountry New Zealand
  • Restaurant Hub
  • NZME Events

SubscribeSign In
Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.
Home / New Zealand

Deborah Hart: We need to talk about the Family Court reforms

By Deborah Hart
NZ Herald·
7 Jul, 2019 11:00 PM5 mins to read

Subscribe to listen

Access to Herald Premium articles require a Premium subscription. Subscribe now to listen.
Already a subscriber?  Sign in here

Listening to articles is free for open-access content—explore other articles or learn more about text-to-speech.
‌
Save

    Share this article

    Reminder, this is a Premium article and requires a subscription to read.

Deborah Hart says sustained courtroom conflict can often cause children to experience subsequent problems, including low self-esteem, depression, withdrawal and high anxiety. File photo / Greg Bowker

Deborah Hart says sustained courtroom conflict can often cause children to experience subsequent problems, including low self-esteem, depression, withdrawal and high anxiety. File photo / Greg Bowker

Opinion

COMMENT

A long time coming. Five years after the Family Court underwent its last raft of changes — which in turn was a significant overhaul since its establishment in 1981 — an independent panel has found that much still remains to be done if the country's busiest court is not to remain one of the most problematic.

The sensitivity of the government's response to the Rosslyn Noonan-led committee's recommendations will be one of its big "well-being" tests.

The new report turns on the admirable goal of motivating people to engage with effective services, and early, rather than the Family Court in anything but the most extreme cases.

There will always be litigation. That's the whole point of a court. There will always be some parents who need a judge to make a final decision, and for hopefully just a few there may simply be no other practical way.

Deborah Hart
Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.

Among the proposals are a number of highly useful reforms - free family mediation and counselling, free and early legal advice, more and better information and wraparound, cohesive services that cater for all, including, at long last, Maori. Unfortunately, another proposal includes doing away with the cost-effective, demonstrably successful practice of mandatory mediation – the process where parties sit down with an experienced, independent person who helps them to negotiate their own solutions.

That's as surprising as it is regrettable.

Mandatory mediation ought to be at the heart of any new package, as much so as it already is in numerous other areas — in tenancy cases, for example, or human rights and employment cases for that matter.

Currently, there are no fewer than 73 specific pieces of legislation (soon to be 74 after the introduction of the government's mandatory farm debt mediation) in which parties looking to gain access to a court or tribunal are directed towards mediation.

Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.

Indeed, the new report says the evidence is "compelling" that such professional mediation in general is in the best interests of children and young people to make arrangements about their care and other decisions about their lives with the least conflict.

A group of survivors a petition to uphold the United Nations Recommendations for a Royal Commission of Inquiry into the Family Court in November last year. File photo / Oliver Parrant.
A group of survivors a petition to uphold the United Nations Recommendations for a Royal Commission of Inquiry into the Family Court in November last year. File photo / Oliver Parrant.

The compilers acknowledge that solving family disputes is usually best done away from the "inherently adversarial" setting of a court. They propose, however, that this be done on a voluntary basis. Independent research shows us that voluntary mediation tends not to work well, as scholars from the University of New South Wales discovered in 2012. It just happens to be the case that when people most need to talk, even in a safe setting with the help of a skilled third party, they just don't. Unless they are compelled to do so.

Discover more

Opinion

Jackie Edmond: Wiser words needed in abortion debate

15 Jul 05:00 PM

Mandatory mediation would free up more of the Family Court's time to concentrate on those cases that are genuinely insoluble in this context — in cases involving extreme violence, for example or where there is urgency or where the parties have tried mediation, but they just couldn't get agreement.

Absent this, after all, we can only expect to see many more cases in the court system, more families at war, more kids caught in the fallout.

And we also should know mediation usually offers our best opportunity for parents and children, for family. It allows families to recognise, and usually agree on, the best options for them – which is precisely why it should be required, too.

Deborah Hart

What's more, many of those families, who will have waited an average of 10 months to get into court, will receive a judge's order to go to mediation. Why? Because the new proposals require judges to send cases to mediation if it hasn't been tried and should have been. Being required to mediate of course doesn't mean being required to agree. That's an important point. So is the fact that using it doesn't mean a settlement will magically be reached. However, as the new report found, a whopping 84 per cent of cases that went into family mediation settled in part or in whole. And the majority never went to court at all.

Which is good news for everyone, presumably, and without it the situation would also presumably be rather dire for everyone, too.

Not least the children. While kids whose parents manage a civilised separation will usually fare just fine in life, we also know that sustained courtroom conflict can often cause offspring to experience all kinds of subsequent problems, including low self-esteem, depression, withdrawal and high anxiety which in turn carry their own hefty social (and financial) price.

Of course, there will always be litigation. That's the whole point of a court. There will always be some parents who need a judge to make a final decision, and for hopefully just a few there may simply be no other practical way.

Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.
Deborah Hart. Photo / Supplied
Deborah Hart. Photo / Supplied

We know all this. Just as we also know, or ought to know, that the agreements families make together, their own decisions, are less likely to cause family friction.

And we also should know mediation usually offers our best opportunity for parents and children, for family. It allows families to recognise, and usually agree on, the best options for them – which is precisely why it should be required, too.

For our progressive Government, the reasonable obligation now is to focus on family well-being and require most families to simply talk.

* Deborah Hart is the executive director of the Arbitrators' and Mediators' Institute of New Zealand

Save

    Share this article

    Reminder, this is a Premium article and requires a subscription to read.

Latest from New Zealand

New Zealand

Lotto Powerball jackpots to $10m, two winners split $1m

05 Jul 09:16 AM
New Zealand

Watch: Jet boat joy rides through swollen stream as severe weather batters parts of NZ

05 Jul 08:41 AM
Auckland

Person seriously injured falling from vehicle in Pokeno crash

05 Jul 08:16 AM

There’s more to Hawai‘i than beaches and buffets – here’s how to see it differently

sponsored
Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.

Latest from New Zealand

Lotto Powerball jackpots to $10m, two winners split $1m

Lotto Powerball jackpots to $10m, two winners split $1m

05 Jul 09:16 AM

The winning tickets were sold in Auckland and on MyLotto to a Waikato player.

Watch: Jet boat joy rides through swollen stream as severe weather batters parts of NZ

Watch: Jet boat joy rides through swollen stream as severe weather batters parts of NZ

05 Jul 08:41 AM
Person seriously injured falling from vehicle in Pokeno crash

Person seriously injured falling from vehicle in Pokeno crash

05 Jul 08:16 AM
'Very sad and tragic': Baby found critically hurt at house dies, homicide probe launched

'Very sad and tragic': Baby found critically hurt at house dies, homicide probe launched

05 Jul 06:33 AM
From early mornings to easy living
sponsored

From early mornings to easy living

NZ Herald
  • About NZ Herald
  • Meet the journalists
  • Newsletters
  • Classifieds
  • Help & support
  • Contact us
  • House rules
  • Privacy Policy
  • Terms of use
  • Competition terms & conditions
  • Our use of AI
Subscriber Services
  • NZ Herald e-editions
  • Daily puzzles & quizzes
  • Manage your digital subscription
  • Manage your print subscription
  • Subscribe to the NZ Herald newspaper
  • Subscribe to Herald Premium
  • Gift a subscription
  • Subscriber FAQs
  • Subscription terms & conditions
  • Promotions and subscriber benefits
NZME Network
  • The New Zealand Herald
  • The Northland Age
  • The Northern Advocate
  • Waikato Herald
  • Bay of Plenty Times
  • Rotorua Daily Post
  • Hawke's Bay Today
  • Whanganui Chronicle
  • Viva
  • NZ Listener
  • Newstalk ZB
  • BusinessDesk
  • OneRoof
  • Driven Car Guide
  • iHeart Radio
  • Restaurant Hub
NZME
  • About NZME
  • NZME careers
  • Advertise with NZME
  • Digital self-service advertising
  • Book your classified ad
  • Photo sales
  • NZME Events
  • © Copyright 2025 NZME Publishing Limited
TOP