La gratuidad de la justicia en la jurisdicción voluntaria como competencia otorgada a las notarías públicas del Ecuador.

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to analyze the scope of free (unpaid) access regarding voluntary jurisdiction processes, which has been transferred over to Public Notaries in Ecuador, thus ensuring access to jurisdictional protection for users. To this end, a legal and doctrinal analysis has been carried out over national and international bibliography about what is voluntary jurisdiction and the principle of free access to justice. A qualitative methodology was used in this paper, with an observational, descriptive and cross-sectional approach. A survey was applied to Law professionals and Notaries Public in the city of Cuenca to find out their opinion and determine the actual importance of transferring competences to the Notary Public service; to that end, questionnaires were prepared for each group of participants and, after analyzing and interpreting their results, fundamental data was extracted to support the critical document. As a contribution to the work carried out, a critical document has been proposed establishing that free access to justice, from the notarial services perspective, is very complex if the provisions of Art. 304 of the COFJ are to be taken into account – regarding expenses and administration costs for their offices– since, generally speaking, the income that these professionals receive from collection of fees is intended for payment of their office organization expenses, this being the reason why the principles of celerity and legal certainty, on the other hand, are widely supported with the notarial service that is received.