Tribunal d'instance

The tribunal d'instance was France's lower civil court of first instance prior to 2020, a judicial court of record for general civil suits that also included a criminal division handling misdemeanors, with decisions appealable to higher courts. Before 1958 it had functioned as a Justice of the Peace Court, and in 2020 it merged with the tribunal de grande instance to form the tribunal judiciaire; proceedings were oral and did not require legal representation, and the court handled civil claims up to 10,000 euros along with property disputes, defamation cases and guardianship matters. This description is adapted from Wikipedia contributors under CC BY-SA 4.0; changes were made. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/