Families in court—guilty or guilty?

SUMMARY. The case for the introduction of family courts in England and Wales rests on the unsuitability of the present court systems to the effective and efficient resolution of family problems Last year the Socio-Legal Centre for Family Studies of the University of Bristol, published an important study by Mervyn Murch and colleagues, The Overlapping Family Jurisdiction of the Magistrates' Courts and County Courts (1987), which describes the views of the court-users of their experience in court. The research discovered that families find court attendance frightening and that the present court arrangements are insensitive to the needs of families. This article brings these findings to a wider audience and comments on their significance