Family and Matrimonial Law

The parties separated in 2016 and have one child.

The mother sought sole custody, while the father sought sole or joint custody.

The father had made multiple unfounded reports to child protection services and police regarding the mother, and relocated without consent.

The court granted the mother sole custody, finding the parties unable to communicate effectively and the father's conduct unreasonable.

The court also imputed income to the father for child support purposes, finding him intentionally unemployed while attending college, as he was capable of working part-time and during summers.

The parties sought costs following several motions, including an urgent motion without notice brought by the applicant to allow the children to attend their grandfather's funeral, and a subsequent motion where success was divided on issues of parenting time, sale of the matrimonial home, and a section 30 assessment.

The court found that success was divided on the main motion and neither party beat their settlement offers, resulting in no costs being awarded for those appearances.

However, the court awarded the applicant costs on a substantial indemnity basis for the urgent motion, finding the respondent's refusal to allow the children to attend the funeral was unreasonable.

The respondent was ordered to pay $1,725.79 in costs.

The children's aid society brought a status review application seeking to place three children in the permanent custody of their paternal grandparents.

The children had been in the grandparents' care for over two years due to the parents' substance abuse and instability.

The mother opposed the order but failed to attend the trial or demonstrate meaningful progress in rehabilitation.

The court found that the grandparents provided safe, stable, and loving homes and that the parents were unlikely to resume their parenting roles in the foreseeable future.

The court granted custody to the grandparents with supervised access for the parents.

The appellant father and respondent mother both brought motions to introduce fresh evidence in an appeal from an arbitrator's decision declining to order their children be vaccinated.

The court applied a relaxed Palmer test, given the case involved the best interests of children.

The court admitted the father's fresh expert evidence regarding vaccine safety and the mother's genetic variation, as well as evidence challenging the credibility of one of the mother's experts.

The court also admitted the mother's fresh evidence from the children's family doctor regarding their current health and the psychological impact of the litigation.

A temporary publication ban on the children's health information was made permanent.

The parties separated after immigrating to Canada from Iraq.

The court determined the date of separation to be April 7, 2016, when the respondent left the matrimonial home.

The court found the respondent was unjustly enriched after he dissipated $222,229.29 from a joint line of credit by sending it to his brother in Iraq, and ordered restitution.

The court maintained the existing custody and child support orders, calculated support arrears, and denied the respondent's request to travel with the children to Iraq due to the risk of abduction.

The respondent's claim for occupation rent was dismissed, and the applicant was awarded costs on a substantial indemnity scale.

The parties separated after a high-conflict relationship.

Following separation, the children's relationship with the applicant father deteriorated until they refused to see him.

The father sought sole custody and reunification therapy, alleging the respondent mother intentionally alienated the children.

The mother sought sole custody and an order leaving access to the children's discretion.

The court dismissed both primary claims, finding no intentional alienation but concluding it was not in the children's best interests to abandon the relationship with their father.

The court ordered disengaged parallel parenting, maintained the children's primary residence with the mother, and implemented a step-up access schedule for the father along with mandatory parental counselling.

The self-represented father brought a motion to change a 2012 order, seeking to retroactively adjust his child support obligations based on his actual income and to restore his suspended driver's license.

The mother brought a cross-motion to fix arrears, impute income to the father, and enforce section 7 and RESP contributions.

The court found the father was underemployed and had prioritized commercial debt over child support.

The court retroactively adjusted child support for 2014-2016 based on determined and imputed income, ordered the father to pay his proportionate share of section 7 expenses, and maintained his RESP obligations.

The request to restore the driver's license was dismissed for lack of jurisdiction.

The mother was awarded $10,000 in costs due to the father's unreasonable litigation conduct.

The parties separated and initially shared parenting of their two children in Hamilton.

The mother subsequently moved to Brampton and sought sole custody and primary residence, while the father sought joint custody and to maintain the shared parenting schedule in Hamilton.

The court found that the mother had always been the primary caregiver and that the father required significant third-party assistance to manage his parenting time.

Applying the best interests of the child test under the Children's Law Reform Act and the relocation principles from Gordon v. Goertz, the court awarded sole custody and primary residence to the mother in Brampton, with the father having parenting time three weekends out of four and mid-week visits.

Child support was also ordered.

The applicant mother brought a motion for temporary orders regarding child access, alleging the respondent father had an alcohol dependency, an addiction to pornography, and had placed her under surveillance.

The respondent sought equal parenting time, arguing his alcohol issues were under control.

The court ordered a graduated access schedule for the father, starting with supervised daytime visits and expanding to unsupervised overnight access, strictly conditional upon his compliance with random and scheduled alcohol testing (RAMP) and a section 30 assessment.

Following an interim custody proceeding where the applicant father was successful in obtaining an order for equal shared parenting, he sought costs of $28,421.

The court declined to award costs, finding that both parents had litigated in good faith out of genuine love for their children.

The court held that imposing a costs award against the respondent mother would negatively impact her financial ability to maintain the shared parenting arrangement, which would ultimately harm the children.

Both parties were ordered to bear their own costs.

The applicant sought leave to appeal interlocutory orders regarding retroactive child support and the sale of the matrimonial home.

The court denied leave to appeal the child support order, finding no conflicting authority or reason to doubt its correctness.

However, the court granted leave to appeal the motion judge's failure to adjudicate the motion to list the matrimonial home for sale after the applicant amended his pleadings to rely on the Partition Act.

The court held that the failure to determine the issue constituted an error of law, making the correctness of the decision open to serious debate.

The moving party failed to attend the family law trial, resulting in the dismissal of his spousal support claim and the trial proceeding in his absence.

Before final judgment was rendered, he retained counsel and brought a motion to reopen the trial.

The court applied the test for setting aside a default judgment by analogy, finding that while the moving party's explanation for his absence was inadequate, his spousal support claim had significant merit given the length of the marriage and income disparity.

To ensure procedural fairness, the court set aside the dismissal of the spousal support claim and reopened the trial for that issue only, but declined to reopen the property and equalization issues.

Following a motion to change regarding spousal support and post-secondary educational expenses, both parties sought costs.

The applicant claimed $34,397.90 and the respondent claimed $36,958.23.

The court found divided success, as the applicant did not succeed in obtaining retroactive repayment of support and the respondent did not succeed in her claim for educational expenses.

Noting that neither party obtained a final order more favourable than their offers to settle, and applying the principle that costs must be decided at each step, the court ordered that each party bear their own costs.

The respondent mother brought a motion to change seeking expanded and overnight access to her child, who has been in the custody of the paternal grandmother since birth.

The grandmother opposed the expansion and sought to reduce access due to safety concerns, the mother's inconsistent exercise of access, and the child's heightened anxiety.

The court found a material change in circumstances and determined that expanded access was not in the child's best interests, citing the mother's refusal to vet new partners and failure to prioritize the child's needs.

The court reduced the mother's access to every other Saturday and dismissed the grandmother's request to restrict the mother from bringing future motions.

The respondent was successful on her motion for temporary spousal support and the sale of the matrimonial home.

She had previously made a settlement offer to accept a lower amount of support.

The applicant had unwisely withheld support to leverage increased access, which was delayed pending an OCL report.

The court awarded the respondent costs fixed at $5,000 for fees plus HST and $300 for disbursements.

The applicant brought a family law proceeding which the respondent argued was statute-barred under s. 7(3)(b) of the Family Law Act.

The respondent claimed the parties separated in 2001, while the applicant claimed they separated in 2009.

The court examined the parties' living arrangements, travel, and communications to determine when they separated with no reasonable prospect of resuming cohabitation.

The court found the parties continued to cohabit until June 30, 2007, meaning the applicant's 2010 proceeding was commenced well within the six-year limitation period.

The moving party sought to vary child and spousal support provisions contained in a Separation Agreement and a subsequent Amending Agreement.

The court considered whether it had jurisdiction to vary the agreements under section 17 of the Divorce Act or section 37 of the Family Law Act.

The court found it lacked jurisdiction under the Divorce Act because the agreements were not incorporated into the Divorce Order.

Under the Family Law Act, the court found it had jurisdiction to vary child support but lacked jurisdiction to vary spousal support because the parties were already divorced when the Amending Agreement was signed.

The mother appealed a trial judge's decision finding her child, who has Down Syndrome, in need of protection and making him a Crown ward without access.

The appeal was allowed.

The Superior Court found the trial judge erred by failing to hold a bifurcated hearing, improperly admitting disposition evidence during the protection phase.

Furthermore, the trial judge made palpable and overriding errors by failing to consider evidence supporting the mother's position and by finding the child was at risk of physical and emotional harm without sufficient evidence, including a lack of expert evidence regarding emotional harm.

The court ordered the child to be returned to the mother's care.

The applicant moved to strike the respondent's pleadings for non-payment of costs orders, and the respondent cross-moved to set aside previous orders regarding child support for their adult child.

The court found the respondent's conduct in repeatedly disobeying court orders and bringing meritless motions to be disgraceful.

The court dismissed the respondent's cross-motion, ordered child support to terminate on January 31, 2017 as agreed by the parties, and awarded the applicant $12,000 in costs on a full indemnity basis.

The court also ordered the respondent to post $5,000 as security for costs before bringing any further proceedings.

The applicant mother and respondent paternal grandparents both sought sole custody of a 13-year-old child on a motion to change a 2009 final order for joint custody.

The child's father was deceased.

The court found that the relentless conflict between the mother and grandparents constituted a material change in circumstances that was actively harming the child.

Applying the best interests of the child test under the Children's Law Reform Act, the court awarded sole custody and primary residence to the paternal grandparents, finding they could provide stability, shield the child from conflict, and support her education and extracurricular activities.

A transition period was ordered during which the mother's parenting time was temporarily suspended.