law. The Law prescribes that the first hearing must be scheduled within 30 days of filing a petition and that the procedure must be completed within 90 days. 4 However, Praxis represented the beneficiaries in the several procedures in which the first hearing was scheduled as late as six month from initiating the procedure, and in the procedures in which the issuance of decision was pending for longer than a year. The courts in smaller municipalities and cities usually conducted the procedures more quickly and efficiently than in the bigger cities, which is probably due to smaller workloads in these courts. According to the data that Praxis obtained from the courts, the procedures lasted four and a half months on average, but it must be noted that the First Basic Court in Belgrade - before which an exceptionally large number of procedures are conducted and which significantly exceeded the deadline in the procedures conducted by Praxis before this court - refused to provide the requested information, and can therefore be concluded that the average length of procedures is certainly greater than the aforementioned. It must be reiterated that sometimes the parties contribute to the long duration of the procedure, because they fail to attend hearings. Moreover, it happened relatively often that the court terminated the procedure by issuing a decision on the withdrawal of petition because the summoned petitioner failed to attend the hearing. There were often problems with the summons being served, as many legally invisible persons live in the settlements in which mail delivery is more difficult and unreliable. EVIDENTIARY PROCEDURE: As regards the conducting of evidentiary procedure, no major or numerous irregularities have been observed. However, in several procedures, the courts insisted on hearing the petitioner’s parents, even though they were abroad, and precisely this circumstance was the reason for deciding to initiate a non-contentious procedure for determining the date and place of birth, rather than an administrative procedure of subsequent registration in birth registry books, since the administrative procedure requires the participation of parents and the non-contentious procedure does not. In addition, one court in several procedures refused to hear the proposed witnesses, disqualifying them in advance, without hearing their evidence, but insisted that close relatives must appear as witnesses, regardless of the law that provides only that witnesses must be of the age of majority. A particularly disconcerting example of such practice is the case of a Praxis beneficiary who received a notice to appear before the court (it was not the summons for the hearing) some forty days after filing a petition. The petitioner appeared before the court and the judge told him that the proposed witnesses were not eligible and that the witnesses had to be the persons who were present at his birth and knew him since his birth, i.e. the persons from Kosovo (the petitioner was born in Kosovo). Moreover, the judge said that it was necessary also that the petitioner’s father – who was nearly ninety years old, bed-ridden, suffering from old-age dementia and living in Montenegro – had to draw up a written statement confirming that the petitioner was his son. The judge suggested to the petitioner that the best thing would be to withdraw his petition and initiate a new procedure with new evidence and new witnesses. Unfortunately, being ignorant of the law, the petitioner acted according to the suggestion, and the judge made an official note that included the petitioner’s statement on the withdrawal of the petition. In line with that official note, the court issued a decision on the withdrawal of the petition, and also stated that the petitioner did not request a written copy of the decision, due 4 Exceptionally, the deadline for the issuance of decision may be extended for 60 days, but only if there is an indication that the person whose birth is being determined had temporary residence in a foreign country. . 3