three additional family courts will be operational from next month the heavens may be handling the rush of marriages but back on earth its the family courts that are working overtime to dissolve marriages that have hit the relationship roadblock with marriages these days having a short shelf life and couples unwilling to soldier on with a marriage that has all but gone kaput there is a lot of pressure on family courts to deal with divorce applications expeditiously so much so that now bangalore will soon have three more family courts to ensure theres speedy processing of applications so that marriages that cant wait for death to do them apart can come undone but do more family courts mean that couples will become complacent about making their troubled marriages work knowing there is an exit door close by or will this move fast track pending divorce applications and help couples escape relationships that have become toxic says relationship expert dr shyam bhat earlier too there were people trapped in unhappy marriages but divorce was a dirty word back then and there was social stigma attached to it nowadays divorces are commonplace and theres no social stigma around it especially in urban centres gender roles have evolved tremendously and rapidly and both the man and the woman increasingly want to inhabit a more egalitarian society the joint family system of the past afforded more time to a husband and wife to iron out their issues and differences the child was unaffected because he had others in the family to fall back on dr bhat adds nowadays we live in nuclear setups where more often than not both the wife and husband are stressed out their lifestyles entail high stress divorce is the result of social change not the cause of it so while yes more family courts might encourage some to end their marriages without giving it a chance but conversely it might also help many who are trapped in miserable marriages to get out of them faster energy therapist and counsellor avril quadros does not however sound very gungho about more family having had firsthand experience with how the family courts work i know theyre really shoddy when two people in a marriage opt for a divorce the lawyers and clients hope for a speedy procedure as no one wants to hang around the courts forever however because they are junior advocates or legal aides who have no experience on cases and because theres so much workload and judges come late and the court is lax cases spill over year into year into year so having 23 fasttrack courts would be a great idea if they could do in one day what theyre currently doing in three as to why divorce rates have been seeing a 20 increase over the years ps dinesh kumar civil lawyer and mediator says today since most couples are working their timings dont match there is a lack of interpersonal communication most couples file