Families will find it even harder to challenge inquest findings they think are wrong in Victoria, the mother of a man shot dead by police says.
Under an overhaul of the Coroners Act, the time limit for families to appeal over inquest findings or a refusal to hold or reopen an inquest will be narrowed from three months to 28 days.
Bobby Cobani, one of six grieving relatives who spoke out against the planned changes on Tuesday, said distressed families would have even less time to find and pay for legal counsel for a Supreme Court appeal.
"If I want to get a ruling overturned, I shouldn't have to pay a million for it," she said.
"They (government or commercial institutions) have all the resources. Legally, there has got to be a fairer system."
The Federation of Community Legal Centres (FCLC) assisted Ms Cobani in the inquest, completed last month, into her son Samir Ograzden's death in a shootout with police in a South Melbourne car park in May 2008.
The FCLC backed plans to broaden the grounds on which relatives can appeal against a coronial finding.
But FCLC senior policy adviser Dr Chris Atmore said the timeline changes would place stricter time constraints on families who are already without adequate information or legal help.
"Reducing the appeal time makes it much more difficult for families to come to grips with the legal process and get legal help, so probably even less likely that most of them will pursue that avenue of appeal," she said.
Dr Atmore said the changes, set for debate in parliament as early as this week, were an attempt to cut corners rather than improve funding to reduce a backlog of cases.
Attorney-General Robert Clark said the changes to timelines for appeals were made at the request of the court and to bring them closer into line with timelines interstate and those for other appeals.
"This will help provide grieving families with final outcomes more quickly," Mr Clark said in a statement.
Another proposed change would mean inquests into deaths in care or custody are no longer mandatory if the death occurred through natural causes.
Mr Clark said coroners could still hold a full inquest into a death from natural causes if they believed that should occur for any reason.
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