Our Contact Centre will be closed from 5pm on 24 December 2024, reopening at 8am on 3 January 2025. National Office (Aitken Street, Wellington) reception will be closed from 5pm on Friday 20 December, reopening at 8am on Monday 6 January 2025. For more information, see Court and Tribunal hours
Reports that evaluate the 2014 reforms to the Family Court were publicly released by the Ministry of Justice today (27 April 2018).
The 2014 reforms supported out-of-court solutions in order to reduce the impact on children, and to better utilise the Family Court by only having the most difficult cases enter the court system.
The reports provide an analysis of user participation, engagement, and outcomes within the Family Court system. The released reports are:
Administrative Review of the Family Justice System reforms [PDF, 967 KB]
Family Justice Reforms; An initial cohort analysis [PDF, 898 KB]
Without Notice Applications in the Family Court Research Report [PDF, 1.7 MB]
Exemptions from Family Dispute Resolution where a party did not participate [PDF, 337 KB]
A fifth report has been publicly available for some time:
Evaluation of Family Dispute Resolution service and mandatory self-representation [PDF, 2 MB]
These reports provide analysis which will help inform and provide scope of the future review into the Family Court.