The As­sem­bly of South­ern Lawyers (ASL) is call­ing on Chief Jus­tice Ivor Archie to com­mis­sion an in­de­pen­dent in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to what they de­scribed as ad­min­is­tra­tive fail­ures and de­lays plagu­ing the Fam­i­ly Courts, par­tic­u­lar­ly in the op­er­a­tions of the Mas­ters of the Court.

In a let­ter to Archie, the Ju­di­cial and Le­gal Ser­vice Com­mis­sion (JLSC) chair­man on April 29, ASL’s pres­i­dent Saira Lakhan out­lined wide­spread con­cerns from its mem­bers re­gard­ing chron­ic dock­et­ing de­lays, par­tic­u­lar­ly for non-con­tentious and do­mes­tic vi­o­lence mat­ters, which the as­sem­bly claimed is caus­ing emo­tion­al dis­tress to lit­i­gants and un­der­min­ing the pub­lic’s con­fi­dence in the ju­di­cial sys­tem.

Not­ing that the Do­mes­tic Vi­o­lence Act pro­vides that in­ter­im pro­tec­tion or­ders grant­ed ex parte shall not ex­ceed a pe­ri­od of 21 days un­less ex­tend­ed by the court, she said such or­ders are de­signed to pro­vide ur­gent and tem­po­rary re­lief to in­di­vid­u­als fac­ing im­mi­nent harm. 

How­ev­er, she said in some in­stances the re­turn date for ex parte pro­tec­tion or­ders is four to six months, and there was one mat­ter —a fa­ther was de­nied ac­cess to his child (where there were no al­le­ga­tions of abuse to the child di­rect­ly)—in which the re­turn date was more than a year. 

Lakhan not­ed that the ini­tial pur­pose of ap­point­ing Mas­ters was to al­le­vi­ate the case­load of judges and en­hance the ef­fi­cient de­ter­mi­na­tion of pro­ce­dur­al, non-con­tentious, and do­mes­tic vi­o­lence mat­ters for the pub­lic’s ben­e­fit.

“How­ev­er, our mem­bers have re­port­ed to us that their ex­pe­ri­ence across both the North­ern and South­ern Di­vi­sions of the Fam­i­ly Court con­firms that this ob­jec­tive has failed due to the in­or­di­nate de­lay in dates be­ing giv­en in the dock­et­ing of non-con­tentious mat­ters be­fore Mas­ters, as op­posed to much ear­li­er dates be­ing giv­en in both con­tentious and non­con­tentious mat­ters be­fore Judges in the same Courts.”

“We are now faced with a sys­tem that is, in key re­spects, less re­spon­sive, less trans­par­ent, and sig­nif­i­cant­ly more de­layed than what pre­vi­ous­ly ob­tained. The re­sult is an ero­sion of lit­i­gant con­fi­dence, pro­fes­sion­al burnout, pro­ce­dur­al un­fair­ness, and, most dis­turbing­ly, the pro­longed suf­fer­ing of lit­i­gants, many of whom are vic­tims of do­mes­tic abuse, who turn to the court in mo­ments of crit­i­cal need.”

In one case, she said, a mat­ter filed in March 2025 was ad­journed to April 2026, de­spite re­quir­ing less than ten min­utes to re­solve.

“The court’s in­abil­i­ty to ef­fi­cient­ly dis­pose of such mat­ters sug­gests a cat­a­stroph­ic fail­ure in its in­ter­nal sched­ul­ing and re­source man­age­ment.”  While the Do­mes­tic Vi­o­lence Act stip­u­lates that in­ter­im pro­tec­tion or­ders must be re­vis­it­ed with­in 21 days, Lakhan said re­turn dates are fre­quent­ly be­ing set four to six months — and in some cas­es over a year — af­ter the ini­tial hear­ing. 

The ASL has urged the JLSC to in­ves­ti­gate the Mas­ters’ per­for­mance and case man­age­ment prac­tices. It has al­so called for the es­tab­lish­ment of a for­mal, trans­par­ent dock­et­ing and sched­ul­ing pol­i­cy, en­force ju­di­cial per­for­mance stan­dards and a Code of Con­duct for Mas­ters, and es­ca­la­tion mech­a­nism for un­list­ed or un­re­solved mat­ters be­yond statu­to­ry or rea­son­able time­frames.

It al­so asked for for­mal stake­hold­er con­sul­ta­tions with key pro­fes­sion­al bod­ies, in­clud­ing the Law As­so­ci­a­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go, the ASL and the Fam­i­ly Law As­so­ci­a­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go.

Guardian Me­dia’s email to the Ju­di­cia­ry’s cor­po­rate com­mu­ni­ca­tions re­quest­ing com­ment was not ac­knowl­edged up to late yes­ter­day evening.