In focus group discussions, women highlighted the stress that delays, repeated hearings, and errors cause in custody litigation. For example, one woman noted in a single custody case that ‘as a result of an inefficient court, my children were forced to go through five different mental institutions where they were tested’. Another woman stated that:
‘a judge in Pančevo was on my [custody] case for one year. We had a hearing every month, and only after a year he told me that he wasn’t competent for my case, so I had to go to another judge. And what about my costs for coming to the court, absence from work, what about that?’