The Domestic Relations Courts

IN our own generation there has grown up in this country a species of court variously known in some communities as domestic relations or family courts. To a large number of legal aid organizations and social workers, the vast importance of these courts has become increasingly apparent as its vital problems manifested themselves through repeated contact. Not many communities, even among the more populous states, can boast of such separate courts, and the others usually lump these cases together with the gross and sordid daily business of the police court. To give a brief outline of some of the courts thus established; to touch upon their salient features; to look somewhat ahead to their immediate betterment; to advocate the establishment of such courts in communities where they do not yet exist and to call upon legal aid organizations to assist in these endeavors, is the purpose of the following pages. The National Association of Legal Aid Organizations, through its Committee on Domestic Relations Courts, has endeavored to gather available data in relation to these courts and their machinery. In the present review we had to limit ourselves to a brief study of several such courts functioning in Eastern and MiddleWestern states. Before we go into a description of these courts, however, it would be well to make brief mention of the social evil which has brought these courts into being

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