Dispute Resolution Officers improve family court process
By Barbara J. Brown
Calgarians now have a quicker and less confrontational way to solve their family law disputes outside the courtroom.
Since December 2001, the Dispute Resolution Officer (DRO) Pilot Project has resolved approximately 72 per cent of the cases it handled.
The 35 DROs involved in the project are lawyers who have practised family law for at least 10 years and volunteer one day a month to the program.
Significant court time is saved because Dispute Resolution Officers are able to offer a neutral opinion on what the likely outcome would be if the matter was heard in the courtroom, based on their years of experience.
“What we’re finding is people are tending to settle things much earlier,” said Lonny Balbi, a DRO and member of the Family Law Dispute Resolution Officer Pilot Project Committee. Balbi has been practising family law in Calgary for 19 years.
Between
95 and 97 per cent of all matters settle just before trial, after
the court time has been booked, pre-trial preparations have taken place and expenses have built up for
the parties, Balbi said. Getting people to resolve the dispute earlier
in the process without having to see a judge frees up court time and reduces
expenses. It is estimated that 42 days of court time were saved between
December 2001 and May 2002.
“Before the program, people would come to court unprepared and waste considerable time and money,” said Balbi. “[The program] gets people more streamlined.”
Anybody wanting to deal with a child support issue must first see a Dispute Resolution Officer, but parties can also meet voluntarily with a DRO to conduct settlement conferences on other matters.
“Most people are going into the program by consent because they’re finding that the Dispute Resolution Officers are very good and are giving good opinions,” said Balbi.
Wendy Young, a family law lawyer in Calgary and a DRO, said people are responding positively to the program. Scheduled time-slots have been increased from five to six one-hour appointments each day, and appointments fill up fast, she said.
Young said that people find that even if the process doesn’t solve everything, it certainly narrows issues down, which can be very useful when making decisions.
“We try to make it a non-adversarial, comfortable, informal setting, so it encourages communication,” said Young. “Family law lawyers know that this is an intensely personal area of the law — it’s an area of law that affects many people.”
People communicate better with each other during the discussions, Young said, giving them an opportunity to resolve a lot of problems at an early stage in the legal process.
For further information on the DRO program, please contact Heidi Jackson at (403) 297-3875.
