According to scholars from the Institute for the State and the Law – BAS, family justice has been pushed to the periphery of public and professional debate

According to scholars from the Institute for the State and the Law at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, family justice has been pushed to the periphery of public and professional debate

Family justice is a very important field, but it has gradually been pushed to the periphery of public and professional debate. This was stated by Assoc. Prof. Velina Todorova of the Institute for the State and the Law at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences (BAS) during a discussion on the topic "Family Justice in Contemporary Bulgarian Society". The forum was organised on 26 June 2014 in Sofia by the Institute for the State and the Law (ISL) and the Kristyu Tsonchev Training Centre for Lawyers, and was dedicated to the 145th anniversary of the founding of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences. The discussion was attended by scholars from the ISL, Sofia University "St. Kliment Ohridski" and Plovdiv University "Paisii Hilendarski", judges, lawyers, experts from the National Legal Aid Bureau, the Centre for Settlements and Mediation at the Sofia District Court (SDC), and others – 54 participants in total. 

Assoc. Prof. Todorova commented that the reform of the judicial system is connected rather with the issues of organised crime and corruption, while family justice, people and children remain in the background. She recalled that family cases cover all disputes arising between spouses and parents, as well as cases relating to protection against domestic violence and the protection of children's rights. According to the statistics of the Supreme Judicial Council, these account for about 10% of the cases heard annually by the district courts (excluding those heard at first instance by the Regional Court), i.e. about 40 000 cases a year.

The forum made it clear that access of socially disadvantaged citizens to family justice appears to be relatively problematic. The Director of the Legal Aid Directorate at the National Legal Aid Bureau, Petya Dobreva, reported that the Bureau provides legal aid in about 9 000 family disputes annually, while it is requested in about three times as many. She stressed that the social threshold for receiving legal aid is very low. A person must meet a number of conditions, including receiving social benefits. To determine whether a person meets the conditions for these social benefits, the differentiated minimum income, set according to an individual criterion, is used, and the basis for calculating it is the guaranteed minimum income, which has not been changed since the beginning of 2009 and is currently BGN 65 per month. Thus people with very low incomes which nevertheless exceed the set threshold are left without the possibility of legal aid. On the other hand, even when they do receive it, people often cannot make contact with the legal aid lawyer appointed to them, for reasons such as limited financial means, health problems, or the remoteness of the locality where they live from a larger town. Finally, there is the problem of the low fees of legal aid lawyers, which are currently BGN 20 for providing a consultation, BGN 30 for preparing documents or a statement of claim and BGN 120 for procedural representation. Since these fees are very low, there is an outflow of legal aid lawyers from the system.

During the discussion, the challenges facing the development of mediation as an alternative means of dispute resolution, which has been applied in Bulgaria for about 10 years, were discussed. Mediators from the Centre for Settlements and Mediation at the Sofia District Court shared information about their practice. The Centre has 60 trained and certified mediators, while there are 1 200 mediators in the whole country. However, there are no official statistics on the application of mediation in family disputes. Questions were discussed such as whether mediation distances people in disputes from the protection of their rights, whether classical mediation is combined with legal counselling on the consequences of the disputes, whether mediation should become mandatory, how it is reconciled with legal representation by a lawyer, and others.

In her presentation "Family Conflict and Its Fair Resolution by the Court", Judge G. Valkova of the Sofia District Court shared that a fair decision in a family dispute is one that works in the interest of the child. According to the judge, the law is in debt to the people. The regulation in the Family Code for resolving disputes between parents over parental rights is scant and relies on the discretion of the court, yet it is in fact the parents who should be best placed to resolve the dispute between themselves. Services are needed that support the disputing parties and help them in this direction, and the court should refer them to such services. Representatives of non-governmental organisations and lawyers agreed with this and also supported the idea of introducing shared parenting as the norm.

The lawyers supported the need to introduce specialisation in family justice, by setting up separate court panels that hear family cases, including those relating to the rights and interests of children. Such specialisation is required by the specific nature of the subject matter, by the need for the court to have broad access to social, psychological and other expert assessment, and by the need for special training of judges, stated Iv. Georgiev, a judge at the Sofia District Court and doctoral candidate at the ISL-BAS. The reform in the opposite direction at the Sofia District Court at the end of 2013, consisting in reducing the number of panels in the Matrimonial Division from 15 to 6, has caused difficulties in the work of the court, lengthened the time limits for deciding cases and, as a result, restricted access to family justice.

The lawyers also commented that it is necessary to raise people's legal culture, starting with children at school. They must first be taught their rights and obligations in the family, which would result in a kind of prevention even before disputes reach the courts and ways of resolving them have to be sought.

With the help of the Training Centre for Lawyers, a full recording of the discussion was made, which will be published.

The discussion received financial support from International Social Service – Bulgaria under the project "Child-Friendly Justice".