Frederic P. Huard

The respondent father brought a motion to vary an interim child support order, arguing his income had decreased after he accepted a promotion to a managerial position that did not offer overtime pay.

The applicant mother opposed the motion, arguing the father was intentionally under-employed to avoid paying child support.

The court found that the father's new position was a legitimate career advancement that increased his base salary, and he was not intentionally under-employed.

The court granted the motion to vary child support based on the father's reduced income, resulting in a set-off amount payable by the mother.

The applicant father brought an urgent motion for joint shared custody and equal parenting time of the parties' nine-year-old twins.

The respondent mother opposed, seeking an order for supervised access without overnights, citing recent allegations of domestic violence for which the father was criminally charged.

The court found no evidence of exceptional circumstances requiring supervised access, noting the Children's Aid Society had closed its file and the risk appeared to have dissipated after separation.

The court declined to order a week-on/week-off schedule due to insufficient evidence but granted the father unsupervised parenting time on alternating weekends and Wednesday evenings.

In a family law proceeding involving the equalization of net family property, the applicant challenged the qualifications of the respondent's proposed expert witness on business valuation.

The court conducted a voir dire and applied the Mohan and White Burgess tests.

The court found that the proposed expert, an accountant without a Chartered Business Valuator designation, lacked the necessary specialized training and experience.

Furthermore, the court exercised its gatekeeping function to exclude the evidence, noting significant frailties in the expert's report, including its failure to state its purpose as a valuation, lack of a clear valuation date, and the expert's failure to sign the required acknowledgement of expert's duty.

The proposed expert's evidence was ruled inadmissible.

Following a family law trial involving custody, access, child and spousal support, and property equalization, the parties were unable to agree on costs.

The successful party sought recovery of legal costs after obtaining favourable results on most issues.

The court applied the Family Law Rules, including the presumption under Rule 24(1) that a successful party is entitled to costs and considered the impact of settlement offers under Rule 18.

The court found that the moving party’s settlement offers were more favourable than the trial outcome and therefore justified recovery of costs from the date of the offer.

Considering proportionality and the respondent’s financial circumstances, the court awarded partial indemnity costs of $25,000 inclusive of disbursements and HST.