VIRGINIA JUSTICE SYSTEM FUND FAMILY COURTS

The Virginia family-court system sorely needs fixing.

Currently, family matters are divided between Juvenile and Domestic Relations Courts, which handle delinquency and some custody and support matters, and Circuit Courts, which are responsible for divorces, adoptions and annulments.

The system is such that a dissolving family may find itself fighting in two different courts at the same time, over related matters. And if a decision is appealed from Juvenile and Domestic Relations Court, the case goes to Circuit Court to be tried anew: an expensive and useless repetition. Furthermore, the two different courts follow different rules and procedures.

If a state sought a family-courts system as expensive, time-consuming and confusing as possible, it might use Virginia's for a model.

The present system was supposed to be fixed by the 1993 Family Court Act, which provided for new Family Courts to handle family matters. Civil cases appealed from Family Courts would go to the state Court of Appeals, where the lower-court record would be reviewed but the case would not be retried.

The Juvenile and Domestic Relations Courts would convert to Family Courts, and about 18 percent of the Circuit Court workload would go to Family Courts. Thirty-two new judges would be appointed. Costs were to be met by increasing court fees a few dollars.

In 1990 and 1991, 10 test Family Courts, including one in Chesapeake, had proved highly successful. A survey of litigants showed far more satisfaction with Family Court than with the dual system of Juvenile and Domestic Relations Courts and Circuit Courts.

The 10 pilot Family Courts were faster, cheaper and more prone to use mediation than other courts. They lessened the agony of families breaking apart.

The 1994 General Assembly was expected to approve the court fee to set up the Family Courts, but everything went wrong in the heat of partisan politics.

Gov. George F. Allen was new in office, having campaigned against increasing taxes. The court-fee increase looked to him like a tax increase. Also, Republicans knew that if they approved Family Court funding, the Democrats, holding the slim majority, would name all 32 new judges statewide.

Many Democrats cooled on the Family Court proposal, saying they didn't want to pass a fee increase that Allen would veto, while accusing them of trying to hike taxes.

Nothing happened in 1995. This session, bills have been introduced in both houses to fund the Family Courts, now creating 33 judgeships. The Senate Courts of Justice Committee passed the Family Court bill last Thursday. It now goes to the Senate Finance Committee for review.

The bill is the No. 1 priority of Chief Justice of the Virginia Supreme Court Harry L. Carrico, whose duties include heading the Virginia court system. It is a high priority of the Virginia Bar Association, the League of Women Voters of Virginia, the Virginia Federation of Women's Clubs, and Action Alliance for Virginia's Children and Youth, an umbrella group for organizations supporting children.

If partisan politics again block the Family Courts, Virginians will have every reason to be upset, for the personal agony and needless expense and delays of the current dual-court family system will continue.