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 area, 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 BAS during a discussion on the topic "Family Justice in Contemporary Bulgarian Society". The forum was organised in Sofia on 26 June 2014 by the Institute for the State and the Law (ISL) and the Krastyu 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", 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 associated 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.

It became clear from the forum that access to family justice for socially disadvantaged citizens is emerging as a relatively problematic issue. Petya Dobreva, Director of the Legal Aid Directorate at the National Legal Aid Bureau, reported that the Bureau provides legal aid in about 9 000 family disputes per year, while about three times as many requests are made. She stressed that the social threshold for receiving legal aid is very low. There are numerous conditions that a person must meet, including the receipt of social benefits. In order to determine whether a person meets the conditions for these social benefits, the differentiated minimum income, determined on an individual basis, is used, and the basis for calculating it is the guaranteed minimum income, which has not been changed since the beginning of 2009 and currently stands at BGN 65 per month. Thus, people with very low incomes which nevertheless exceed the established threshold are left without the possibility of legal aid. On the other hand, even when they do receive it, people are often unable to make contact with the court-appointed lawyer assigned to them, for reasons such as limited financial means, health problems, or the distance of their place of residence from the nearest larger town. Finally, there is the problem of the low remuneration of court-appointed defenders, which currently amounts to 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, an outflow of court-appointed defenders from the system is observed.

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 total throughout the country. However, there are no official statistics on the use 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 assistance by lawyers, and others.

In her presentation "Family Conflict and Its Fair Resolution by the Court", G. Valkova, a judge at the Sofia District Court, shared that a fair decision in a family dispute is one that works in the interests of the child. According to the judge, the law is in debt to the people. The regulation in the Family Code on resolving disputes between parents concerning parental rights is sparse and relies on the discretion of the court, yet it is in fact the parents who should be best placed to resolve the dispute among 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, with the establishment of court panels that hear family cases, including those relating to the rights and interests of children. Such specialisation is necessitated by the specific nature of the subject matter, by the need for the court to have broad access to social, psychological and other expertise, and by the need for special training of judges, stated Iv. Georgiev, a judge at the Sofia District Court and a doctoral student 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. First, they must 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".