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

By Lori L. Aylwin

One of the toughest issues we face in family law is the question of whether a parent can move their residence and “move forward” after separation when there are arrangements with another parent for access or when there is a shared residential arrangement. 

Here is a list of DO’s and DON’Ts

Catherine Hyde – Family Law Clerk

Summers in Barrie, Ontario have always been beautiful.  We live in a marvelous city with the beautiful Kempenfelt Bay at its centre.  I came from a siFamily on beachngle parent home and there was not much money.  Back in the 60’s every Sunday we walked from our home on Mulholland Drive

The breakdown of a relationship is always a stressful experience but the emotional impact is heightened when there are children involved and spouses are faced with making a decision about how they intend to parent their children going forward or, worse yet, they are faced with having a judge make that decision for them.  Once

There was recently a flurry of news coverage in Canada: http://www.thestar.com/news/article/1060078 and internationally:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-manchester-15074776  reporting that a missing little girl from Manchester UK had been found in Quebec. The little girls’ story is a sad one, though similar tales have become more familiar and more widely reported in recent years. Pearl Gavaghan Da Massa was

I just read an article in the September 12, 2011 issue of McLean’s that caught my eye.  The article written by Julia McKinnell discusses a new book for divorced parents entitled “Joint Custody with a Jerk” co-authored by Julie Ross and Judy Corcoran. Boy, the article hit home with me as in my practice

The Child Support Guidelines, which came into effect on May 1, 1997, set out four admirable objectives:

  1. to promote fairness to children;
  2. to ease tension and conflict between parents;
  3. to reduce litigation; and
  4. to ensure consistent treatment of parties.

When children reside primarily with one parent (more than 60% of the time), the Guidelines are