A socio-legal study on the conciliatory bodies appointed under section 106 of the Law Reform (Marriage and Divorce) Act 1976 : the constraints and suggestions for reform

Abstract

Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) is promoted because of its advantages over litigation. There are many branches of ADR, among others are arbitration, mediation, negotiation, and conciliation. This study focuses on conciliation and reconciliation of matrimonial disputes handled by the Marriage Tribunal as a conciliatory body appointed under section 106 of Law Reform (Marriage and Divorce) Act 1976. The objective of this study is to analyze the problems faced by conciliatory bodies in terms of effectiveness, competency, enforcement and impact on the target groups. Another objective is to study the process of family mediation as practised in Australia, Singapore and New Zealand to be as models of reference. In order to prove the hypothesis, a special study has been carried out and questionnaires have been distributed to the respondents. This study adopts both qualitative and quantitative methods that are necessary for a socio-legal research. The qualitative method draws data from the principles, legal writings, legislations, Malaysian family laws, case law, and foreign family laws. The quantitative method employs the statistical tool, i.e, Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) for Windows Program Version 17.0 for data analysis. Two statistical procedures namely descriptive and inferential statistics were used to analyse the empirical data. The findings of this study prove that although majority of the respondents are quite satisfied with the reconciliation sessions and officers in charge, it still fails to reconcile the disputing parties. It indicates that the reconciliation process handled by the conciliatory body appointed by the government under the Law Reform (Marriage and Divorce) Act 1976 is not effective. Therefore, there is a need for the practice and the relevant law to be improved. This study has also examined the practice of family mediation in other jurisdictions which could be the model in order to establish family mediation in Malaysia.