Family law matters are fraught with so much emotional turmoil. First, the end of any relationship brings pain, sadness, and anger; then you have family and friends who take sides, followed by the practical uncertainties for the children, who are caught in the middle of the dispute. To make it worse, there are serious [...]
Recent Amendments to the Divorce Act and Children’s Law Reform Act As we anxiously awaited for the calendar to turn over from February to March this year, hoping for the end of the Covid-19 restrictions and for better weather to come, the federal and provincial governments successfully made significant changes to two important laws [...]
When I was a young boy, my friends and I loved playing the board game “Monopoly.” We would play for hours on end. We developed our own strategies to beat our opponents, to try and make money, acquire property and to win the game. Sometimes we had a lucky roll of the dice, and [...]
As we approach the holiday season of giving, many of us are tasked with a list of what presents we need to get for our loved ones, friends, neighbours, and perhaps colleagues at work. In family law litigation, it may seem like it is Christmas all year long because their clients always ask family [...]
As the autumn leaves have mostly fallen off the tree, and most of us have struggled to burn off all the calories we gained over the Thanksgiving weekend, October will soon give way to November. That means one thing for many of us in the legal profession: It is “Make a Will” month? Last [...]
They say that in life, only two things are certain – death and taxes. After 27 years of practicing law, I would add a third certainty to that mix – the growing unaffordability of family law litigation. When I started my practice in 1994, only 1 in 5 clients in family court was without [...]
You would think that life cannot get worse than when the local child welfare agency (sometimes called the Children’s Aid Society, or CAS) comes to your home and apprehends your children. Sadly, it can get worse, and often does. Not only can they take your children and limit any access you have to them, [...]
For those of you who are fans of the TV series “The Simpsons,” you will know that one of the characters, Helen Lovejoy, wife of Reverend Lovejoy, is often heard to bemoan the phrase “Please, Think of the Children.” In an animated comedy TV show, geared for older children and adults, we may laugh at [...]
At the beginning of any relationship, hope springs eternal, and the possibilities seem endless. There appears to be nothing that could get in the way of a perfect pairing. But for many people, that’s not how real-life works. Putting aside that over 50% of marriages end in divorce, and the [...]
When I first started practicing law in 1994, family law matters were dealt very differently than today. The court forms were simple and open-ended, but lawyers would fill them with very long, predictable, and inflammatory statements. Generally speaking, the successful party was the one who filed the court papers first. When we got to court, [...]
