Honorable Robert Bunda

President of the Senate

Twenty-First State Legislature

Regular Session of 2002

State of Hawaii

Sir:

Your Committee on Health and Human Services, to which was referred S.B. No. 2765 entitled:

begs leave to report as follows:

The purpose of this measure is to convert the existing paper-based divorce and annulment registration process to an electronic process and shift the responsibility for inputting this information from the Department of Health staff to the attorneys, parties, or court staff.

Testimony is support of this measure was submitted by the Department of Health and the Office of the Lieutenant Governor. Testimony in opposition to this measure was submitted by the Judiciary.

Your Committee finds that this measure will modernize and thus streamline the divorce and annulment process. The present process is a two-step process that is paper-based. The elimination of any preparation and routing of paper work in the registration process results in quicker creation of divorce records and eliminates the needs to bind and store paper divorce records.

Upon further consideration, your Committee has amended this measure by deleting the requirement that the court staff would be responsible for the data inputting if the person is pro se, and reverting back to the ten-day time limit for the certificate completion.

As affirmed by the record of votes of the members of your Committee on Health and Human Services that is attached to this report, your Committee is in accord with the intent and purpose of S.B. No. 2765, as amended herein, and recommends that it pass Second Reading in the form attached hereto as S.B. No. 2765, S.D. 1, and be referred to the Committee on Judiciary.