Provisional Minutes of the 13th Meeting of the Family Law Subcommittee of theLegislative Council (provisional translation)
On March 29, 2022, the 13th meeting of the Family Law Subcommittee of theLegislative Council was held at the Ministry of Justice (in person and online). Nearly all
the members and non-voting members attended the meeting. The Chairman, Prof.
OMURA Atsushi, presided over the meeting.
Continuing from the 12th session, the Subcommittee reviewed and deliberated, withreference to the meeting materials, the rules in the legislation concerning mandatory
agreements about custody of a child when parents get divorced.
The Subcommittee also addressed rules concerning (i) provision of information on
divorce and (ii) divorce by agreement involving a minor child. Regarding (i), most of themembers provided positive feedback regarding the idea of parenting classes for parents
who get divorced in order to provide parents with the legal information necessary forparenting after divorce. However, there were arguments for and against mandating
participation in classes for divorce by agreement. Also, some suggested that the objectivesof parenting classes need to be specified and that parenting classes need to be given inways that do not make the participants feel uncomfortable.
Regarding (ii), there were few objections to the establishment of rules to facilitate
compliance with child support agreements between the parents when they divorce byagreement. However, regarding the particular rules about agreements for child custody
including child support, the subcommittee members posed a variety of questions andoffered their opinions: (a) How effective will the process be at facilitating agreements if
lawyers participate in the process of negotiating such agreements? (b) If such agreements
are considered as enforceable obligations, careful consideration must be taken to ensure
the legitimacy of such obligations in terms of both substance and procedure; (c) Although
it is preferable for the parent to enforce obligation in a simple and prompt manner, there
are many issues to be considered, such as the entities that confirm the agreements,
methods to confirm the agreements, or whether an approval system should be introduced
or not; and (d) Granting of enforcement powers also needs to be carefully reviewed.
In addition, with the objective of facilitating child support agreements, thesubcommittee members’ opinions were largely divided as to whether or not a divorce byagreement without an agreement on child support should – as a matter of policy – beallowed as a common practice.
An official of the court then gave an explanation over the handling of domestic violenceclaims on a practical level. The Subcommittee reviewed and deliberated how the rules
should address the procedures for child support and visitation etc., with reference to themeeting materials.
Due to time restrictions, the Subcommittee decided to carry over the further reviews
with reference to the meeting materials to the next meeting. Prior to adjournment, several
subcommittee members shared their opinions on a variety of matters. For example, there
were positive comments regarding an exception for child support claims in which theclaimant-parent could use the public notice procedure without a firsthand investigation of
the respondent’s home address (usually a failed attempt at an investigation is required touse the public notice procedure) under specific conditions, as long as the burden on single
parents is taken into consideration. On the other hand, it was suggested that noticeprocedures when a party’s home address is unknown should be carefully reviewed or thatthe separated parents should specify an address for receiving notices in advance.
Furthermore, there were arguments for and against the introduction of temporary
visitation orders; there were opinions that maintaining parent-child interaction does notalways reduce conflict between the parents; there were opinions that the objectives andrequirements for the system, and the effectiveness thereof, should be reviewed carefully,
after sorting out the differences between the temporary visitation orders and measures
under the current law such as temporary order for another purpose or provisional
visitation for testing.
※These provisional minutes are the summarized results of the subcommittee meeting and are to beprovided by the Secretariat of the Subcommittee in both Japanese and English on an as-neededbasis. The official meeting minutes (in Japanese) will be published at a later date.