Associate, Family Law
The ending of a marriage or common law relationship is incredibly stressful. You worry about your kids, house, income, savings all while you may be experiencing significant conflict. The decision to separate and the decisions immediately after separation often have lifelong impacts on you, your spouse and your children. Most
Barrie Hayes, Family Law Partner.
The Family law act provisions in relation to equalization of net family property require that the parties account for and value family assets which existed at the date of marriage and date of separation.
The date of marriage is easily established, but fixing the date of separation, on occasion
David Harris-Lowe, Associate, Family Law
The Ontario Court of Appeal made a decision in the case Virc v. Blair this past May. It raises questions about the circumstances when a separation agreement can be set aside. It’s also a cautionary tale about negotiating a separation agreement properly in the first place. The parties in
Thomas Dart, Partner, Family Law
We are in the midst of an Ontario election. The campaigns of the three leading parties can only best be described as adversarial. As voters, we should ask: Is the adversarial nature of the campaign helpful to the governance of Ontario? I think most of us would answer most emphatically
By Douglas Manning, Partner, Certified Specialist in Family Law
In these days of ever-increasing complexity in
how we communicate (and perhaps why we communicate) couples might be well-served to discuss the “Rules of Engagement” in how they use their social media accounts. Relationships are hard enough as it is, but now with the rise
By Douglas J. Manning, Partner, Certified Specialist in Family Law
Being a trendy sort of guy, (and a family law lawyer to boot) I was intrigued in reading about the much publicized recent break up of movie star Gwyneth Paltrow and Coldplay frontman Chris Martin.
They are not calling it a ’separation‘ or a
David Harris-Lowe, Associate, Family Law
One of the first steps to determine the amount of child support to be paid is to determine the income of the parties. The starting point for determining your income is line 150 of your tax return, but this is often not the end. If you are a commissioned
By Douglas J. Manning, Partner, Certified Specialist in Family Law
We are often asked by clients if they can “use” their legal costs they incur to establish their support obligations and rights as a deduction from income for tax purposes? The short answer is that the portion of the legal fees incurred by the
Barrie Hayes, Partner, Family Law
Statistics Canada has recently released an analytical paper addressing parenting and child support after separation or divorce. Highlights of the paper are as follows:
In 2011, approximately 5,000,000 Canadians had separated or divorced within the last 20 years. Of these, about one quarter currently had at least one child
Kim Kieller, partner Family Law
By now most of the public is aware that there are several ways to settle any dispute – whether it be a family breakdown, a corporate shareholder dispute or an employment contract disagreement. Historically, the parties would prepare their materials and let a third party – a judge &ndash