More judges should be appointed to the Family Court in light of the influx of divorce cases expected next week, according to several legal practitioners.

Family lawyer Deborah Schembri, who headed the campaign for the introduction of divorce, said the Family Court was already strained with the current workload.

With divorce legislation officially coming into force on Saturday, many people who have been waiting to apply for divorce for years are bound to start filing applications.

“It doesn’t make sense to make people wait for months for divorce, after they already waited four years or more, just because of a backlog,” Dr Schembri said, pointing out that despite having months to prepare, there were no new appointments to the bench.

This, she argued, was a symbol of the lack of preparation throughout. More mediators were also required and it would be good for these to be given specific training on how to handle divorce cases, since these were not the same as separation cases.

Meanwhile, a magistrate who preferred to be unnamed said another judge in the Family Court “makes sense even in the present scenario”.

“All the more so if divorce will double the workload,” the magistrate said, pointing out, however, that it would always be difficult to gauge exactly what the influx of divorce cases would look like. “Prudence and caution is best at this stage,” he said, adding that the first few months would allow the courts and the government to realise what sort of resources were required.

On the other hand, Dr Schembri said the demand could be calculated conservatively by looking at the number of annulment cases filed this year and the number rejected over the years. “These are all likely to apply,” she said.

So far there are only two judges in the Family Court to deal with all these expected new divorce cases and the backlog of separation and annulment proceedings: Noel Cuschieri and Abigail Lofaro.

Family lawyer Lorraine Schembri Orland said the introduction of divorce proceedings would “definitely increase the workload on an already saturated Family Court”.

She said another judge should be assigned and the system of mediation should be reviewed, in particular in cases where the parties agree. Lawyer Veronica Galea Debono said the judges in the family court were already dealing with a very large workload, and although this was being handled well, if the introduction of divorce continued to increase the number of cases, then the assignment of more judges to this field would “probably become necessary”.

Another lawyer, who preferred to remain unnamed, said there was going to be a “massive stampede” for divorces and there was no doubt more judges and mediators were needed.

“But as always happens in court, it will start off as a disaster and then they’ll patch it up. That’s what happened when mediation was introduced.”