Rhode Island General Law 8-10-5 mandates that the Rhode Island Family Court seek to reconcile the parties and re-establish “friendly family relations”.
This Statute was enacted in 1961. It was a different time and a different era in 1961. This RI Family Law statute is irrelevant and absurd in this day and age. This statute makes me thing “Really??” Perhaps the Rhode Island Legislature should remove this statute from the books by repealing it.
In 16 years as a Divorce lawyer practicing RI Child Custody and Child Support in Family Court, I have never seen any judge attempt to reconcile the marriage or relationship of the parties. Parties often do reconcile but the Rhode Island Family Court plays no part in this reconciliation.
Rhode Island General Law 8-10-5 is another of the long list of outdated Rhode Island Laws which remain on the books. This is still the Law in Rhode Island! However, If I were you, I would not ever mention this statute in the Rhode Island Family Court.
Curiously, 8-10-5 references all actions in 8-10-4 as the types of actions that the Rhode Island Family Court should seek reconciliation for “family friendly relations.”
8-10-4 pertains to abandonment, leaving your family in danger of becoming public charges, neglect to provide for family, habitual drunkards or threat to commit a crime or offense against the person or property of a family member.
It makes no sense that the Rhode Island Family Court would attempt to reconcile the family relations when a person is a habitual drunk or abandons their family.
Below you will find the text of 8-10-4 and 8-10-5.
§ 8-10-5 Attempts at reconciliation by family court. – In all the causes in § 8-10-4, the family court shall seek to reconcile the parties and to re-establish friendly family relations, and to this end may suggest and hold conferences in chambers with the parties interested, and with their counsel, if they are represented by counsel and may have the children of the parties brought before it for examination.
History of Section.
(P.L. 1961, ch. 73, § 1; P.L. 1997, ch. 326, § 8.)
§ 8-10-4 Criminal cases referred to family court. – To the family court shall also be referred for hearing, adjustment, reconciliation, decision, and sentence all causes properly brought in the court or appealed from other courts in which the defendant is accused, as provided by the statutes, of abandonment of his wife or her husband or children, or both, leaving them in danger of becoming public charges; of neglect to provide according to their means for his wife or her husband or children, or both; of neglect or refusal of an habitual drunkard to aid in the support of his or her family; of neglect or refusal by a child over eighteen (18) years of age to provide for the support and maintenance of his or her father or mother; or of threat to commit a crime or offense against the person or property of the defendant’s husband, wife, children, father, or mother.
History of Section.
(P.L. 1961, ch. 73, § 1; P.L. 1994, ch. 88, § 1; P.L. 1994, ch. 316, § 1.)
Rhode Island Attorneys legal Notice per RI Rules of Professional Responsibility:
The Rhode Island Supreme Court licenses all lawyers in the general practice of law, but does not license or certify any lawyer / attorney as an expert or specialist in any field of practice.