quick observations after spending one day in the family court:

a) i’m not used to courtrooms without locked and barred docks and without at least 10 policemen sitting around with their holstered truncheons. (at least i hope they’re truncheons not firearms: i despise guns. still, one does not wish to inquire too closely. )

b) cushioned seating (!) behind the counsel tables, positively luxurious to someone used to wriggling her behind on the hard wooden benches of the criminal courts (yes, you can get pins and needles in your derriere.)

c) notwithstanding a) and people dismissing crime work as “murderers and rapists” (my hairdresser said that to me just recently — “you mean you want to help thugs and robbers?“) i’ve never seen an accused make a bolt for it or shake a threatening fist at a judge or generally act in a way that they had to be leapt on and subdued by law enforcement officers (someone is going to say that their being handcuffed throughout proceedings may have something to do with it, but that is not it entirely: when they come to court, they generally present as meekly resigned.) and yet it is in the divorce courts that i am aware, all morning, of intimations of possible violence however low-level, under the surface of civility. there were only two police officers in court, but they were hovering and alert, poised at the slightest sign of rising tempers or rumblings of raised voices, and in the course of the morning i have seen them several times swiftly intercepting and steering husbands out of separate doors from their wives.

ci) one litigant struck the table several times in argument with the judge (i held my breath but she didn’t have him for contempt: he got a grip on himself after she warned him); one raised his voice until he was nearly shouting; another lingered and raged on even after the judge said her orders will stand and called for the next matter and had to be firmly escorted out, the police officer’s arm on his shoulder half-solicitous half-coercive.

cii) if people do not have enough self control to conduct themselves well in open court and before a judge, i don’t wonder that in the privacy of their own homes they are easily roused and strike their wives at will. needless to say, i also despise family violence.

d) a family, a whole family, parent-child-siblings, taking out protection orders against each other.

di) yes, violence is ever present in domestic situations, et in arcardia…

e) new things learnt concerning defaults in child maintenance payments: warrants of arrest are issued for respondents who fail to turn up in court to explain persistent defaults; for frequent defaulters, the court can also order your employer to directly pay that portion of your salary into your spouse’s bank account. a very practical solution, especially for salaried men who can’t otherwise be brought to account, i like it, but it does take away something — that something being, i think, the volitional performance of your legal obligation and the exercise of your own conscience in upholding the duty to maintain your own children.

ei) the defaulting men protest to the judge about their arrears: i have a new family, i have three children in that marriage. i cannot pay so much. i am shocked at the question that i caught rising in myself and suppress it. (but it is true, i do not understand the drive to be married, to have children.)

f) compared to the parties in the crimcourts you see a wider section and more representative demographic in the famcourt (naturally: one of the parties in the criminal court is always already the public prosecutor, and the majority of people do not commit offences. anyone, however, can divorce, and do.)

fi) the demographics of divorcing couples tell you something much about your society and its archetypes: look at them come, two by two, to the stand. older chinese singaporean man, married to a vietnamese or chinese bride . young indian couple leaving an arranged marriage but fearing repercussion back in india. men with stony faces, women on the verge of tears. you tell yourself an archetypal story about each of them, the way you tell yourself the life stories of strangers on the subway.

g) i am also slightly surprised at the number of western couples filing in singapore courts. (of course one or both of them may be PRs or naturalised citizens — i assume for the sake of simplicity that they are not, and that they have a choice of laws and can forum-shop.) that there are more westerners in singapore courts tells you something about the economy and global mobility; that they are able to commence proceedings in singapore tells you they are here on long-term assignments (to have established domicile); that they choose this jurisdiction — maybe that has something to do with the image of courts (perceived efficiency, but surely not more liberal settlements?)