Family law

The Department of Family Law was born naturally, through the efforts, experience, and enthusiasm of its members: Flavia Barbur and Teodora Rusu.

We started with divorce, division of property and child visitation cases under the Family Code.

With the entry into force of the current Civil Code, we had to rethink our court actions, from counts to pleadings. Many new institutions have appeared and, to a certain extent, our court practice has started from scratch. Parental authority or alternative residence were new and rather abstract concepts, so we studied the judicial practice and doctrine of other countries, especially those from which our legislator drew inspiration.

At the same time, the legislation on the issuing of protection orders began to crystallize.

In addition, we understood that for our clients it is not enough to draft their writs of summons and assist or represent them at the hearings, but pre- and post-divorce advice is needed. Moreover, we consider this advice necessary for other family law disputes as well.

Our clients are informed, from the first hour of consultation, what litigation in court entails, how it is conducted, how long it takes and what evidence is required. We also inform them about how to settle any family law dispute amiably.

We understand that sometimes they need time to make a decision to go to court, especially if the dispute involves a child, and we want to make sure that they make that decision fully informed and with all the evidence ready.

Post-trial counselling has proved necessary in most cases. Clients need to understand exactly what the court has decided, what their rights are and how they can make use of the outcome. In other words, they need to know what to do with the judgment they have received. In this respect, we support them and provide them with legal support for the enforcement of judgments concerning minors: drafting enforcement applications, working with the bailiff, representation or assistance in court in the event of appeals against enforcement.

Unfortunately, over the years, we have witnessed the consequences of verbal, physical or mental aggression on our clients, whether adults or children. We have represented them in cases of issuing protection orders or drafting criminal complaints against the aggressors.

What we are particularly pleased about is that, over the last 10 years, we have been able to observe a major change not only in court practice, but especially in parents’ attitudes towards fathers’ involvement in their children’s lives when they are non-resident parents.

Whereas in the beginning, fathers were more likely to be weekend parents, being able to see their children at the end of the week, twice a month, we are now able to achieve extensive personal relationship programs, which allow non-resident parents to be constantly, actively and sustainably involved in their children’s lives. They can talk to their children via modern means of distance communication – such as video calls, spend half of their holidays with them, see them during the week, get involved in school life or extra-curricular activities.

In some situations, our clients have understood that it takes a long-term effort over several years to create, strengthen and develop their relationship with their children: here we refer to situations where the parents are separated when the child is very young and we have to request, at the beginning, a more restricted program of personal relationships and then, as the child goes through new stages – kindergarten, school, adolescence, to extend, with the help of the courts, the initial program.

We have had to adapt to the reality of recent years and assist our clients in transnational family law disputes, i.e. those in which at least one parent lives abroad and wishes to establish the residence of the minor children there.

From the same category of situations, we started to have more and more cases of international child abduction, assisting the parents from the filing of the return application until the enforcement of the judgment and the actual return of the child to his/her habitual residence abroad.

The last few years have taught us how important it is to collaborate in family law disputes with specialists in the field, as well as the role that a psychologist plays in the evaluation and counselling of parents and children, especially in the procedure of enforcement of judgments concerning minors.

We have witnessed significant changes in concepts, vision and reasons for divorce. We have found that while 7-8 years ago the main reasons for divorce were violence – in any form – extramarital relationships or alcohol consumption, nowadays spouses decide to end their marriage simply because they are no longer happy in their couple and family relationship or because they are unhappy with their partner, and we have to expose these realities in court in such a way that they prove that the marriage relationship has been seriously and irreparably damaged.

We are not neglecting the part related to the division of joint property, another delicate issue when a couple breaks up. We explain to our clients all the possible options of a partition – amiable or judicial – from the moment the client informs us of the decision to divorce, and we assist them throughout the proceedings until they are completed.

We are aware that each client’s problem is the most important, even if it is an amiable divorce. The emotional impact of family law disputes is always greater than in other disputes and we are able to provide our clients with all the legal support they need throughout the process.