Family Courts In India: Reforming A System That Is Failing The Families It Was Built To Protect

Family Courts in India were established to insulate vulnerable families from the harshness of conventional litigation. They were envisioned as specialized forums of compassion, speed, and settlement-driven dispute resolution. But four decades later, the truth is unavoidable: family courts have evolved into spaces where delay is systemic, trauma is prolonged, and relationships are destroyed in the name of adjudication. Instead of being the cure, the system has become a significant part of the disease.

Despite being created as a fast-track remedy, family courts today stand paralysed by staggering pendency — with over 1.11 lakh cases pending in Kerala, more than 70,000 in Bihar, and over 66,000 in Maharashtra alone. They are part of a judiciary already buried under over 4.5 crore pending cases, proving that family disputes have been swallowed by the same institutional rot afflicting the wider system. When the State itself acknowledges that backlogs in family courts are worsening distress for children and spouses already in crisis, it is clear that the system is not preserving families — it is abandoning them to a queue that destroys them before justice even begins.

From what I witness as a matrimonial lawyer, every single day inside family courts, delay is not merely a systemic flaw — it is the most brutal form of injustice we inflict on families. Adjournments are handed out like courtesy passes. Lawyers exploit every procedural gap to exhaust the other side. Judges, drowning under impossible caseloads, cannot give even five focused minutes to the matters that decide a child's future. Files move slower than the breakdown of trust between spouses. Mediation is a box to be ticked, not a sincere attempt at resolution. No psychologist present. No immediate enforcement. No accountability for wasted hearings. The system practically rewards those who drag proceedings, because time itself becomes the weapon — and the court unknowingly becomes the armour of the aggressor. By the time a “final order” eventually arrives, the family it concerns is often already destroyed beyond recognition. The law claims to protect families — yet its delays are the very reason families collapse.

Learned Judges have failed to recognise what I call the life-cycle cost of delay for women. A woman comes into court in the prime of her youth — hopeful that justice will restore her dignity and stability — but as the case drags for years, she alone pays a price that the system refuses to see. Her biological window to plan a family shrinks while hearings are pushed to “the next date.” Opportunities for motherhood, companionship, financial security, and rebuilding her life slowly disappear as she transitions from youth to menopause right in front of the court's indifferent corridors. For men, time may be inconvenient — but for women, time is irreversible damage. Delay steals her fertility, her confidence, her identity, and the chance to start again. The law claims to protect women — yet its delays quietly destroy the most precious years of their lives.

Every day, litigants walk into these courts not in search of victory — but survival. A spouse seeking maintenance does not approach the court for future prosperity, but for present dignity. A parent fighting for custody does not dream of legal triumph, but yearns for the right to remain present in the life of their own child. Yet, what they encounter is an institution where the passage of time silently determines outcomes before any judgment is pronounced.

In family disputes, justice delayed is not merely justice denied — it is childhoods lost, psychological harm inflicted, and human bonds permanently severed. The adversarial structure turns intimate conflict into multi-year warfare. Dependency becomes destitution. Estrangement becomes alienation. A relationship that could have been repaired through timely intervention often becomes irreversibly fractured while the parties wait for the court's attention.

Delay is not accidental here — it is structural. Court calendars overflow. Judges shoulder diverse jurisdictions simultaneously. Specialized training in emotional and child-centric evaluation is still the exception, not the norm. Mediation exists on paper, but rarely as a primary philosophy. The result is predictable: the process itself becomes punitive, often harsher than the problem that brought families into court.

This environment particularly devastates children. They are the silent victims of procedure — growing up not with stability, but with litigation as a constant companion. Every missed visitation morphs into fading memory. Every adjournment becomes a lesson in loss. The law claims to safeguard their “best interests,” but a childhood spent waiting for a verdict is a tragedy manufactured by the system itself.

India must urgently realign family law with the purpose it was enacted to serve. Reform cannot be incremental — it must be foundational. Family Courts should adopt fixed timelines, daily hearing models, and judicial specialization supported by psychologists, child behavior experts, and trained mediators. Enforcement — not just adjudication — must become the core metric of success. A court order that cannot be executed with immediacy is merely a document — not justice.

Most importantly, the system must accept a truth that every litigant already knows: in family matters, delay is destruction. When the law recognises trauma only after years of litigation, it is not providing relief — it is issuing a post-mortem report of a family broken beyond repair. Family justice is unlike any other branch of justice because the subject is not property or commerce — it is human life in its most fragile form. If family courts cannot operate with urgency, empathy, and a commitment to resolution over escalation, then the institution loses its moral legitimacy.

I believe that reforming family courts is not merely a legal necessity — it is a societal responsibility. The measure of a just society is not how it resolves commercial disputes, but how it protects the relationships that form its emotional core. It is time for India to rebuild its family justice system around that principle — before families lose any more years to a process that forgets why it exists.

What good is a decree when the family it concerns no longer exists? Our courts must stop writing legal obituaries.

If delays continue, the only “resolution” family courts deliver is regret.

Preeti Singh, Advocate & Managing Partner at PS Law Advocates & Solicitors , Mumbai , Maharashtra. Views are personal