This is the first time we have a Family Court. Before, family cases went under the Civil Court.

Clifton Grima

Verdict True but lacks context

Act VII of 2026 set up the Family Court as a distinct court for the first time; until then, family cases were heard by the Civil Court. But since 2003 they had been heard by a dedicated Family Section of that court, with its own judges and compulsory mediation, often itself called the Family Court.How we reached this verdict ↓

Analysis and evaluation

Both parts of the statement are correct. Act VII of 2026 set up the Family Court as a court in its own right for the first time, and until then family cases were heard by the Civil Court. What the claim leaves out is that, since 2003, the Civil Court had a dedicated Family Section that already worked as a specialised family court in all but name.

Since 2003, family cases went to a Family Section of the Civil Court

Legal Notice 397 of 2003 set up the Family Sections of the Civil Court in Malta and of the Court of Magistrates in Gozo. From then on, separation, divorce, custody, access and maintenance cases were heard by judges assigned to the Family Section, under their own procedural rules, which also made mediation compulsory before most family cases. In everyday use, and often in the press, this section was already called "the Family Court". Legally, though, it remained a section of the Civil Court.

Act VII of 2026 made it a separate court

Act VII of 2026 changed that structure. According to Dingli & Dingli's analysis of the Act, it establishes the Family Court as a distinct court under the Code of Organization and Civil Procedure, "no longer a mere section of the Civil Court", with its own presiding judge. Presenting the reform, Justice Minister Jonathan Attard said the Family Court would be "a distinct Court, one that will not only have trained and specialised judges but will be complemented by an administrative structure", as reported by It-Torċa. The Government's 2024 consultation document had listed a dedicated Family Court "rather than just a section within the Civil Court" as a goal of the reform.

What research says about specialised family courts

Most of the published evidence comes from the United States, where many states set up unified or specialised family courts from the 1990s. A literature review prepared by the American Institutes for Research for California's court administration in 2002 gathered the evaluations then available. It reported several benefits:

A better-informed bench. In Colorado, "bundling cases and relying on one-family/one-judge creates a more informed bench".
Faster cases in some courts. In New Hampshire, family division cases reached "substantially earlier dispositions" than comparison cases; in Jefferson County, Kentucky, dissolution cases "were scheduled more rapidly"; in Indiana, joint scheduling "appeared to reduce the number of court appearances".
Higher user satisfaction. In Virginia, litigants in the family court "consistently rated their court experiences more positively", and New Hampshire users gave the family division "very high marks for making the process easy to understand and use".

The same review is cautious about how strong this evidence is. It notes there "have been few evaluations of unified family courts", that several used designs without a comparison group, and that gains were not universal: in Colorado the family court "did not reduce the total number of hearings per family". It also found that specialist training for judges, one of the main arguments for a dedicated court, was often uneven in practice. The benefits depended less on the label of the court than on what came with it: judges who stay with family work, one judge following each family, and case management that brings related matters together.

Evaluation

What was said holds. Malta now has a Family Court as a separate court for the first time, and before 1 October 2026 family cases were heard within the Civil Court.

The context missing is how specialised that arrangement already was. For more than 20 years family cases went to a dedicated Family Section with its own judges and rules, commonly called the Family Court. The reform changes the court's legal status and adds its own administrative structure; whether that brings the faster, better-informed justice seen in some foreign studies will depend on staffing, training and case management, which the research suggests matter more than the change of name.

Editorial note

How we assessed this claim

We compared the court structure set up by Act VII of 2026 with the one it replaced, the Civil Court (Family Section) created by Legal Notice 397 of 2003, using the legal texts and legal commentary on the reform. For the second part of the request, the benefits of a dedicated family court, we looked for published evaluations of specialised family courts.

Both facts the speaker stated are correct, which rules out anything below True but lacks context. It stops short of True because the claim leaves out that a specialised family section, with its own judges, had existed within the Civil Court for more than two decades. The new court builds on that section rather than replacing a system with no specialisation.

Limitations

The research on the benefits of specialised family courts comes mainly from the United States, where such courts were often set up alongside other changes, such as one judge per family and new case-management rules. Few evaluations separate the effect of the court structure from those other changes.
No study yet exists of the Maltese Family Court, which began operating on 1 October 2026.