ONTARIO
SUPERIOR COURT OF JUSTICE
B E T W E E N:
Mrs. Hulya Meydaner
Lorne Levine for the Applicant
Applicant
- and -
Mr. Behran Meydaner
Respondent
Kenneth Wise for the Respondent
HEARD: January 8,9,10,13,14, 15, 2020
REASONS FOR JUDGMENT
Tzimas J.
1This family law trial was heard over a number of days in January 2020. The Application was commenced on February 15, 2013. The matter was set down for trial on two previous occasions but was adjourned principally because of Mr. Meydaner’s deficient disclosure. A request for a further adjournment on the eve of this trial on account of persistent deficiencies in the Respondent’s disclosure was denied at the “exit pre-trial". The parties put before the court three issues for determination: equalization, spousal support, and child support. Issues related to child custody and access were not pursued in light of the child at issue reaching the age of 20 by the time of the trial.
2Briefly, the parties were married on March 17, 1990. The Applicant, Mrs. Meydaner, is 54 years old. The Respondent, Mr. Meydaner, is 66 years old. The parties have two sons: Hasan and Selim. Hasan was born in Turkey on July 14, 1991. He is currently 28 years old. Selim was born on February 16, 1999 in Canada. At the hearing of the trial he was just shy of his 21st birthday.
3The parties separated on December 28, 2012. At the time of the separation, Salem was 13 and Hasan was 21. Both sons live with their mother, Mrs. Meydaner. Mr. Meydaner lives in Turkey with his own mother who is 89 years old.
4Mrs. Meydaner seeks an equalization payment that reflects Mr. Meydaner’s actual assets, all of which she alleges he owns in Turkey. Consistent with his threat that she would never be able to prove his real estate holdings, Mrs. Meydaner alleges that Mr. Meydaner has done everything in his power to conceal his ownership of numerous properties. She asks the court to draw several adverse inferences against Mr. Meydaner in light of his persistent failure to disclose his holdings.
5Mrs. Meydaner also seeks child support for Selim for an extended period of time. She recognizes that Selim is now over the age of 18 and is not a full-time student. However, she highlighted the difficulties he encountered in school, his aspirations to return to school to obtain his high school degree and continue with university studies, and his efforts to date. In light of those circumstances she asked that the court award child support for a fixed period of time to give Selim a second chance.
6Finally, Mrs. Meydaner asks that Mr. Meydaner pay spousal support until December 31, 2019, in accordance with the temporary court order of February 4, 2014. She acknowledges that she has managed to improve her personal situation such that she can meet her bare necessities and she therefore does not ask for spousal support beyond the noted date.
7Mr. Meydaner opposes all of Mrs. Meydaner’s claims and asks instead for an order that she pay him an equalization payment of $85,445.44. Apart from a 50 per cent ownership in a commercial property with his sister, Birsen Meydaner, he denies that he owns any other real estate in Turkey. He pleads poverty to the extent that he can barely support himself. He described his situation as being so dire that he has been obliged to move in with his elderly mother in Izmir, Turkey.
8For the reasons that follow, I have concluded that Mr. Meydaner owes Mrs. Meydaner an equalization payment of $621,500. He also owes child support for Selim, up until February 2017, when Selim turned 18. The specific outstanding sum on account of child support comes to $2,534. Finally, Mr. Meydaner must pay spousal support until will December 31, 2019, meaning that he has an outstanding debt of $6,576. Certain interim court orders must also be reconciled as they relate to the advance disbursements of the matrimonial home net proceeds. Specifically, Mr. Meydaner is to reimburse Mrs. Meydaner an additional sum of $11,743.09 from his share of the proceeds, bringing his total debt to $642,353.09. On Mrs. Meydaner’s side of the ledger, she must repay $70,000, on account of her post-separation withdrawal of funds from the matrimonial line of credit. In the result, Mr. Meydaner’s net debt to Mrs. Meydaner comes to the sum of $572,353.09.
9The sum of $113,373 that remains in trust on account of the matrimonial home net proceeds, is to be released forthwith to Mrs. Meydaner and credited to Mr. Meydaner’s debt. That credit will reduce Mr. Meydaner’s net debt to $458,980.09, exclusive of costs. The full reconciliation of the various figures and the specific orders are outlined in the last part of the decision.
BACKGROUND
10The parties agree with the following basic timeline. They were married in Turkey on March 17, 1990 and they separated almost 22 years later, on December 28, 2012. They came to Canada in 1996 and settled in Mississauga. They have two adult sons who live with Mrs. Meydaner. Selim has lived consistently with his mother and was 13 years old at the time of the separation. Hasan has lived with his mother intermittently and covers some of his expenses.
11The matrimonial home was sold in October 2013. The net proceeds from the sale came to $250,233.82. By the time of the trial, the funds were reduced to $113,373, held in trust by the real estate lawyer. As described more particularly below, $136,860 was paid out of the proceeds as a result of various interim court orders. Some of those orders attached to Mr. Meydaner’s share of the net proceeds while others simply allowed for the release of funds with their specific share allocation to be determined at trial.
12Turning to the chronology of this proceeding, Mrs. Meydaner commenced the Application in January 2013. The case was listed for trial and subsequently adjourned in 2018 and 2019. The principal reason for both adjournments was Mr. Meydaner’s inadequate disclosure. In addition, by the time of the trial, he changed counsel at least three times.
13The trial was preceded by 14 court attendances, related principally to Mrs. Meydaner’s ongoing need to obtain support for herself and her son and multiple requests for Mr. Meydaner’s disclosure. Specifically, at the case conference on June 24, 2013, the court agreed to issue a referral order to the Office of the Children’s Lawyer concerning Selim. The parties also agreed to sell the matrimonial home, with the net proceeds to be held in trust pending settlement or further court orders. Mr. Meydaner also agreed to co-operate to obtain a valuation of his investments and bank accounts and sign whatever documents may be required to support that investigation.
14On October 31, 2017, the court ordered that $25,000 be paid out of the net proceeds of sale of the matrimonial home to Mrs. Meydaner and that the sum be credited to any equalization payment found to be owing by Mr. Meydaner to Mrs. Meydaner. Out of that sum, Mrs. Meydaner was required to pay $5,750 for Selim’s private school tuition. The court left the possibility open for the private school fees to be subject to equalization. The court also ordered an additional sum of $4,000 on account of costs payable by Mr. Meydaner, out of his share of the monies held in trust.
15On November 4, 2013, the court ordered on a temporary and without prejudice basis that Selim’s primary residence be with Mrs. Meydaner with Mr. Meydaner permitted to have liberal access arrangements.
16On February 4, 2014, the court ordered the release of $60,000 to Mrs. Meydaner from the net matrimonial home proceeds held in trust. The court refused an equivalent release of funds to Mr. Meydaner. As well, the court ordered the release of $13,540 for the payment of outstanding tuition fees for Selim, and $340 to reimburse Mrs. Meydaner for the purchase of eye glasses for Selim. Finally, on a without prejudice basis, Mr. Meydaner was ordered to pay child and spousal support on the basis of an annual income of $22,668.72. The specific monthly payments were determined to be $181 per month for child support and $137 in spousal support, both retroactive to November 1, 2013.
17On November 13, 2014, on the consent of both parties, the court ordered that a number of payments be made out of the matrimonial home net proceeds to cover the following expenses:
$10,000 to pay for Selim’s tuition fees and related expenses at Nile Academy;
$1,496.56 for the reimbursement of Selim’s airfare to Turkey. Selim went to Turkey with Mrs. Meydaner in the summer of 2014;
$1,052.57 for Selim’s laptop;
$1,272.00, representing the balance of spousal and child support owed by Mr. Meydaner to the Applicant to the date of that order; and
$3,816.00, representing the prospective balance of spousal and child support to be paid by Mr. Meydaner to Mrs. Meydaner for the full year of 2015.
The tuition payments, the laptop computer, and the airfare payments were without prejudice to either party.
18Mr. Meydaner did not make any other payments after this order. Nor did he seek to vary the court order of February 4, 2014. As of December 2019, his arrears came to $8,688 for child support and $6,576 for spousal support.
19On June 10, 2016, the court ordered a trial management conference for October 14, 2016. It also granted Mrs. Meydaner leave to amend her pleadings to include relief for an order for security to be held for future child and spousal support and s. 7 expenses for Selim’s private schooling and post-secondary education costs. At that time, Mr. Meydaner’s disclosure obligations remained outstanding.
POSITION AND EVIDENCE OF THE PARTIES
20Beginning with Mrs. Meydaner’s position, although she formally claimed equalization, as well as child and spousal support, she was resigned to the fact that she would not be able to trace Mr. Meydaner’s actual assets or be able to prove his income and tried to advance her case having regard for those limitations. The proposal she advanced was designed with reference to the remaining $113,000 or so in proceeds from the sale of the matrimonial home. Thus, she proposed that $40,000 of the remaining net assets be set aside to support Selim’s education for a period of five years, that she receive the outstanding sums for spousal and child support owing since 2016, and that the balance go towards the equalization payment owed by Mr. Meydaner to her.
21Mr. Meydaner opposed the advancement of to any additional payments to Mrs. Meydaner and claimed that Mrs. Meydaner owed him a substantial equalization payment. Given Mrs. Meydaner’s improved financial position, he suggested that he should have been the one to be claiming spousal support, though he did not actually do so. Effectively, having regard for Mrs. Meydaner’s withdrawal of $140,000 from the line of credit after the date of separation and Selim dropping out of school, he concluded that he should be receiving the balance of the net proceeds.
22The evidence in support of the respective positions follows.
a. Mrs. Meydaner
23Mrs. Meydaner testified with the assistance of a Turkish interpreter. Although she spoke English fairly well and demonstrated a very good comprehension of the English language, she asked to have the support of an interpreter and that request was accepted. Parenthetically, the interpreter, Funda Pakel, was not a certified interpreter. However, following a voir dire, I agreed that she was sufficiently qualified to provide her services as an interpreter. I took significant comfort from the fact that she was only there to be a support to Mrs. Meydaner and that Mr. Meydaner was in a position to follow the interpretation underway and could bring to my attention any concerns with the accuracy of the translation. I also note that apart from the occasional need to remind Mrs. Meydaner to slow down and to ask Ms. Pakel to provide a word-for-word translation and not summarize Mrs. Meydaner’s responses, nobody raised any concerns over the quality of the translation.
i. Family Life Before the Separation
24Mrs. Meydaner testified that up until her separation, she was a stay-at-home mother and wife. Throughout the marriage, Mrs. Meydaner did not have any income of her own. Mr. Meydaner maintained complete control of their finances and expenses. She did not have her own bank account. Instead, she used a joint bank account and a joint VISA and Mastercard to pay for all of the family expenses. She was obliged to account for every dollar that she spent, even if that related to basic food, clothing and other family needs. If Mr. Meydaner disagreed with her purchases, she said she had to take them back, even if they were essential needs. In short, she had no say in any of the family decision-making.
25The marriage was marked by conflict and by long periods of time when Mr. Meydaner was away from the family. From approximately 2001 until 2008, Mr. Meydaner worked in Montreal. He also went away to Turkey from 2010 to 2012. While in Montreal, Mr. Meydaner deposited funds into the joint account to allow Mrs. Meydaner to pay for the household needs in Mississauga. She also had to care for his parents who were living in Canada at that time. When Mr. Meydaner was in Turkey, he set up a transfer system whereby he transferred funds to his sister, Birsen, who lived in Michigan and she in turn forwarded some monies to the Meydaner joint bank account. Mrs. Meydaner then used those funds to support the family and household needs. Mrs. Meydaner said that in her view, and with the benefit of hindsight, Mr. Meydaner set up this elaborate transfer scheme to make it look like he was paying down a loan from his sister, when in fact there was no outstanding loan.
26Over the course of the marriage, Mrs. Meydaner said that Mr. Meydaner directed her to transfer funds from their line of credit to Mr. Meydaner’s sister in Turkey. She recalled two transfers to Mr. Meydaner’s sister, one for $50,000 and another for $100,000. She thought that those occurred in 2005 but she was not certain. She also recalled that at that time, Mr. Meydaner told her that he was using the money to buy a condo for the family so that they could all return to Turkey. She added that Mr. Meydaner sold two condos that he owned in Turkey in that period of time.
27Mrs. Meydaner explained that to her knowledge, Mr. Meydaner did not purchase a residential condo in Turkey as he promised. Instead, she believed that he invested monies towards the purchase of what she called the “Dome Condos”. She said that Mr. Meydaner’s sister, Fatos, (a.k.a. Fatma), who was involved in real estate, facilitated these investments. To Mrs. Meydaner’s knowledge, at no time did any of Mr. Meydaner’s family pay back any money against the line of credit transfers.
28Mrs. Meydaner produced three documents to support the alleged transfer of funds. The first was a Deposit Account History for the period January 31 to November 1, 2005. It recorded transfers of $101,080 and $50,000. The second document was a Debit Memo from Canada Trust date stamped July 29, 2011 with accompanying payment instructions for the sum of $150,080. A third document labeled “Wire Payment Services” was dated May 10, 2011 and documented a transfer of funds in the sum of $172,800 from an account in Canada to an account in Turkey.
29Mrs. Meydaner also described how, shortly after the separation, she got into Mr. Meydaner’s laptop and went through his electronic files. There, she discovered a document that purported to list the real estate holdings for Mr. Meydaner, his sisters (Birsen and Fatos), and his parents. The document was undated but included values for the listed properties at various denominations. Mr. Meydaner’s total assets were shown to add up to a value of $1,610,606 USD. Through the course of the trial, Mr. Meydaner said that the document was created in 2006.
ii. The Separation
30Turning to the couple’s separation, Mrs. Meydaner testified that the triggering event was a violent disagreement between Mr. Meydaner and his eldest son, Hasan. To situate the incident against the broader context, Mrs. Meydaner explained that Mr. Meydaner did not get along with either of his sons. The violent incident of 2012 was preceded by a significant disagreement in 2010.
31In the immediate aftermath of the 2010 dispute, Mr. Meydaner took his younger son and went away to his sister’s residence in the United States. While Mr. Meydaner was away, Hasan, who remained behind with his mother, attempted suicide. Mrs. Meydaner did what she could to get counselling support for Hasan. Although she did not provide any other details about the incident, she said that Mr. Meydaner did not support her efforts to support Hasan. On his return from the U.S., they attended marriage counselling but Mr. Meydaner did not cooperate with the counsellor. Instead, he left for Turkey, where he remained until November 2012.
32When he returned to Mississauga, Mr. Meydaner proposed that the family move to Turkey. He told Mrs. Meydaner that he had enough money to support the family there. Mrs. Meydaner said that she did not resist the idea. However, in the course of these discussions, Hasan got into a violent argument with Mr. Meydaner. Police had to be called and Hasan was charged with assault against his father.
33While on bail, Hasan went to live with a friend. Mrs. Meydaner was very concerned about the future implications of a criminal record and wanted to do everything she could to defend the charges. When she asked Mr. Meydaner to loan her $2,000 to pay for Hasan’s lawyer’s retainer, Mr. Meydaner refused her the money. Mr. Meydaner’s reaction resulted in an argument and ultimately provoked Mrs. Meydaner to separate. When she told Mr. Meydaner of her decision, he taunted her and warned her that she would be left with nothing and become destitute. He added that she would never be able to trace his assets in Turkey because the properties were not in his name. Mrs. Meydaner said that she tried to resist the taunts by reminding Mr. Meydaner that she had a 50 per cent interest in the matrimonial home. The separation date was December 28, 2012.
iii. The Immediate Aftermath of the Separation
34Immediately following this exchange, Mrs. Meydaner discovered that Mr. Meydaner had cancelled her credit card. Although there were some funds in their joint bank account, she became concerned that Mr. Meydaner would follow through on his threat to leave her with nothing. She spoke to the bank about blocking such a withdrawal but she learned that the account was joint and she could not prevent Mr. Meydaner from drawing down on the account. But as a joint owner, she said that she was told that she could go ahead and withdraw funds if she wished.
35Mrs. Meydaner described how she came to appreciate her jeopardy for the first time and feared that Mr. Meydaner would not hesitate to act on his threat. In a moment of what she described as “fear and panic”, she withdrew $140,000 from the line of credit to support herself and Selim, who was only 14 years old at the time. She was so scared that Mr. Meydaner might be able to trace and claw back the withdrawn funds that she decided to keep $9,000 for her immediate support and expenses and wire the balance to her brother, who lived in Turkey, for its safekeeping. In the months and years that followed, Mrs. Meydaner would ask her brother to draw down on those funds and send her money to support herself and her son. Mrs. Meydaner produced the corresponding bank documentation to confirm both the initial transaction and then the gradual repayment by her brother. By the time of the trial, there was a balance of $3,000 still being held by her brother.
36Following the separation, Mrs. Meydaner worked as a part-time babysitter for approximately seven months. She was paid $10 per hour and she estimated her monthly earnings to be between $400 and $500 per month. Then, from September 2013 and until May 2014, she attended English as a Second Language classes. She did not work during this period of time and relied instead on the monies she had previously withdrawn to support herself and her son.
37After she completed her English course, Mrs. Meydaner continued to work as a caregiver for one family. She provided her services for eight or nine months out of the year; the family went away during the summer months and did not need her care. Her employer paid her cash with the exception of one year when he put her on his payroll and showed her as an employee of his company.
38Mrs. Meydaner explained that her employer was an accountant and prepared her income tax returns. He counselled her to show herself as a sole proprietor so that she might claim deductions. For 2016, Mrs. Meydaner reported a business income of $17,241 and a net income of $9,460.75. For 2017, Mrs. Meydaner worked more hours for the same family and reported a business income of $23,256.12 and a net income of $15,235.
39In 2018, Mrs. Meydaner’s income increased to $34,170. This was the result of her employment with Walmart, where she started to work in November 2017. She quickly moved up to the position of a “Day Fulfillment Associate”.
40Mrs. Meydaner was asked to reconcile the annual living expenses in the range of $57,000 to $60,000 that she reported in her Financial Statement with her income earnings. She reiterated that over the years she drew down on the money she sent to her brother to cover the shortfall. She also explained that those expenses included support for Selim and that in the past few years Hasan had also moved back to live with her. Neither of the sons, who at the time of the trial were 20 and 27 years old, were working, although she also said that Hasan paid for some of his personal expenses.
41Mrs. Meydaner said that she applied for social assistance on two separate occasions. The first time was before her separation. When Mr. Meydaner returned from Turkey in 2012, he completed the social assistance application and obliged her to sign it. Once she separated, she called Social Assistance to cancel the request. She recalled receiving a letter from the Region of Peel and she reimbursed her portion of what she received, which she thought was $600.
42The second time she applied for social assistance was in September 2017. She explained that she was unemployed from May 2017 to October 2017. As soon as she found her job with Walmart, she contacted social assistance to advise them of the change in her circumstances and to ask that the benefits be discontinued.
iv. Disposition of the Matrimonial Home
43With respect to the matrimonial home, Mrs. Meydaner testified that the house was put up for sale shortly after the separation and that it sold in October 2013. Until the sale of the house, she and Mr. Meydaner lived separately in the same house. In this period of time, Mr. Meydaner covered all the household expenses. He relied on the rental income from the tenant they had in their basement unit, as well as the child benefits.
44Once the house was sold, she moved into a condo apartment with Selim, and Mr. Meydaner went to the United States to live with his sister. He remained there for approximately seven or eight months and then returned to Turkey and moved in with his own mother. Hasan moved in with his mother in 2017. At the time of separation, he was living with a friend. Mrs. Meydaner added that Mr. Meydaner obliged her to pay for the household contents that she wanted to keep. She did not have any record of the money she paid.
v. Child Support and Issues Related to Selim
45On the subject of child support for Selim, Mrs. Meydaner explained that he was 13 years old when she and Mr. Meydaner separated. He did not get along with his father because his father insulted and taunted him on a regular basis. Selim also suffered a nervous breakdown, although it was not clear if that occurred in 2010 or after the separation.
46Selim attended a private Turkish School, Nile Academy, from Grade 6 until the first semester of Grade 12. In the fall of 2017, he encountered difficulties with the “school administration” and dropped out after the midterms. Then in 2018, Selim tried to take courses online but found it difficult to follow the instructions. Mrs. Meydaner said that she saw her son studying and working away at the course but also witnessed his frustration at not being able to follow the courses. Eventually, he gave up altogether. Mrs. Meydaner said that she paid the course registration. She also produced a letter from Continuing & Adult Education of the Peel District School Board that confirmed that Selim attended one session from September 4 until November 27, 2019.
47At the time of the trial, Selim was not registered in any full-time study. Mrs. Meydaner said that he had to complete eight courses to graduate from high school. To that end, he took one course in the fall of 2019 but as of the trial date, he had not received any report card because of the teachers’ work to rule and rotating strikes. She added that registration for the next course was expected to open on February 24, 2020 with classes to begin on March 8 or 9, 2020. Mrs. Meydaner was confident that Selim wanted to complete his high school requirements and go to university. Finally, Mrs. Meydaner said she was aware that Mr. Meydaner wanted Selim to go to Turkey to attend university there but that Selim was not interested in such an option.
vi. The Proceeding in Turkey
48Mrs. Meydaner confirmed that in 2018 she commenced a proceeding in Turkey to claim an interest in the properties held by Mr. Meydaner and his family members. She saw this as the only way to trace Mr. Meydaner’s assets and claim her due share. Her counsel advised the court that the Turkish action was stayed pending the outcome of the Canadian Application. In the meantime, an equivalent of a certificate of pending litigation was registered against the one commercial property that she knew about to prevent its disposition. Counsel also advised the court of the Turkish lawyer’s suggestion that if the Canadian Court were to make a formal request for information about Mr. Meydaner’s and his family’s assets in Turkey, he could use that request to obtain a Turkish Court Order for that information.
b. Mr. Meydaner’s Evidence
49Mr. Meydaner testified over several days. He also called his sister, Birsen, to testify. He said that he would have liked his mother to give evidence as well but that she is elderly and too fragile to make the trip from Turkey. He also said that Fatos was not available to testify.
50Mr. Meydaner prefaced his overall testimony with an expression of regret and disappointment. He said that the separation was very unfortunate, and he expressed his utter disbelief at what occurred. He said that he did his best to provide for the whole family and to make sure that his wife and children had a comfortable lifestyle. He added that he pleaded with Mrs. Meydaner, with tears in his eyes, not to divorce, but she went ahead anyway. He said that the separation was especially regrettable because the matrimonial home was paid off, “I had investments in Turkey and there were no debts”. Compared to their friends, Mr. Meydaner said that they were leading a comfortable life and “they had everything”.
51With respect to his views and sentiments for Mrs. Meydaner, although he suggested that right until the separation he loved and cared for her, he also said that she was lazy and only interested in the television soap operas that she watched. He said that he proposed that he open a flower shop, a laundry shop or a coffee shop for her to operate but that she was not interested. He also said that he tried to encourage her to finish high school but that she rejected that as well.
52Mr. Meydaner was expressly challenged about his plans all along to leave Mrs. Meydaner. It was put to him that his design all along was to gradually transfer funds to Turkey with the intent to eventually abandon the family. Mr. Meydaner denied that suggestion. He said that the family had everything they needed and he had no plans to divorce Mrs. Meydaner. To the contrary, he explained that he and Mrs. Meydaner had agreed to return to Turkey and that they had talked about it for years. Mr. Meydaner acknowledged that he worried that there would come a time when their sons would resist such a move.
53Mr. Meydaner denied that during the marriage he wanted to be in total control of the family finances. In his view, his wife was free to go and do anything she pleased. She had her own car, her own credit card, she was not obliged to work because he was making good money, and he totally supported her and the children. In his view he spent a “fortune” on his wife and his children. But he also said that his wife kept their sons away from him and that his financial means were limited.
54When it was put to Mr. Meydaner that he favoured his “Turkish Family”, meaning his sisters and mother, over his own family in Canada, he responded that it was Mrs. Meydaner who “did not want to be around men” and who wanted to be in control of everything. She simply wanted him to be the provider and had no problem with his absence. He went as far as to suggest that she told him to stay in Turkey and not come back. He added that he never prevented Mrs. Meydaner from coming to Turkey. When he was challenged with the suggestion that Mrs. Meydaner had no control over any money and could not possibly be in control as he suggested, Mr. Meydaner accused counsel of “engineering a narrative” that was not true. Unprompted by any specific question, he added that he was not a cruel husband and did not beat his wife.
i. Mr. Meydaner’s Employment History and Income
55Mr. Meydaner was born in Turkey. He came to Canada in 1971 when he was 16. He completed Grade 13 at Bloor Collegiate Institute and continued his studies at Ryerson Polytechnic University where he obtained a degree in Information Technology (“IT”). As an IT professional he developed IT application systems. As an overriding statement, Mr. Meydaner advised the court that his skills were quite marketable until about 2000 but after that, they became completely obsolete because his training was limited to mainframe systems.
56Mr. Meydaner’s professional life and his associated earnings may be understood in three periods: before his marriage, during his marriage, and after his separation.
57In the period before his marriage and immediately after graduation, Mr. Meydaner worked for a paper company from 1979 until 1982. He then worked for Scotiabank as a program analyst. In 1986 he returned to Turkey to serve in the military. Then in 1987 he worked for Abitibi Price for two years, followed by a short period of employment with Manulife. In 1989 he decided to return to Turkey to get married. He said that in the period between 1985 and 1986 he had made a number of very good investments and by 1989 he estimated his net worth at $425,000. His documentary evidence on his net worth was very limited and based essentially on the differences between the purchase and the sale prices for various residential properties.
58Once in Turkey, and before he met Mrs. Meydaner, Mr. Meydaner bought a condo in Istanbul. He also got a job for four months working with a telecommunication company that was associated with Alcatel of France. He said that the money he was earning in Turkish Lira was good but when he converted the compensation into dollars, it was not enough. After Mr. Meydaner was married, he bought another condo. As between the two condos, the parties lived in one of them and rented out the other. Mr. Meydaner did not provide any evidence concerning his income in those years.
59In 1990, in and around the time when the United States was planning to invade Iraq, Mr. Meydaner became concerned that this would not bode well for Turkey and he decided to return to Canada with Mrs. Meydaner and their infant son. He accepted an offer from CIBC to work as an IT developer and worked there until 1994. He became unemployed for a short period of time but was then hired by TD Bank as an “EDI Analyst”. This was not quite an IT position and Mr. Meydaner said he left it in 1996 or 1997. From there he decided to work as a private consultant. He said that the “Y2K craze” became a goldmine for people with his skills as users rushed to make their systems Y2K compliant. His last job as a consultant was with IB Global in 1999. No evidence was provided regarding Mr. Meydaner’s annual income in these years. Mr. Meydaner, however, said that he was able to support his family and pay private school fees for his children.
60Mr. Meydaner said that he made the mistake of believing that he would continue his consulting work after 1999. Instead, the demand dried up and all of a sudden there was no need for people trained in mainframes. He obtained a short six-month contract in Oshawa with the Ministry of Finance and then he was hired to work with a software consulting company in Montreal. That company did work for Air Canada but after a year, the company downsized, and he was let go.
61Mr. Meydaner said that he remained unemployed from 2001 until 2004. Nonetheless, he was able to pay his bills and “managed well” because of his savings from investments. He did not give any indication of what those investments would have been, but he said that he had no debts, apart from his home mortgage, and that things were manageable.
62In 2004 he found a job with Montreal Tek Systems as an IT consultant and worked there for four years. Although he lived in Montreal, every two weeks, he drove from Montreal to Mississauga to be with his family. He left on Friday and returned on Sunday. This routine continued until 2008 when he had to resign because some projects were cancelled, and he was “benched”. He also found the driving very long and difficult.
63Mr. Meydaner said that his return to Mississauga after 2008 was very difficult professionally. By that point he was 55 years old and he could not compete “with the younger kids” who knew the new technologies. His technical expertise was limited to the old technology. Later in his testimony he said that in actual fact, his skills became obsolete after the age of 35. He said, “my thing was to make real estate investments” and confirmed that in 2002 he sold an investment property he owned with his sister, Fatos. Together, they earned $230,000.
64In 2011 he received a job offer from IBM Turkey to undertake a major project for a Turkish Bank, AKBNK. He left his family behind in Mississauga and went back to Turkey to take on the project. As he finished that project, he received another contract from a British software company located in Istanbul and worked on that for a period of six months, until September or October 2012. He then returned to Mississauga, only to find out several weeks later that his wife had decided to separate and file for a divorce. He said that her decision to separate came as a complete shock.
65Mr. Meydaner did not provide any evidence concerning his annual income in this time period. He agreed that in 2011 he received a total of Turkish Lira (TRY)1 38,000 in four payments, from a person by the name of Ibrahim Toptan, who he believed worked for IBM Turkey. Although the said payments were described in the bank statements as “from cash register to the account”, Mr. Meydaner said that the payments must have been his salary payments from IBM. Mr. Meydaner did not dispute that he received TRY9,800 from somebody by the name of Mr. Kenan Subecki and TRY16,000 from Mr. Erol Yazmaci. He thought that they were payments he received for doing contract work. He went on to explain that he was not a full-time employee of IBM Global but rather was hired by a consulting company that worked for IBM Global. His specific project was for the bank.
66He testified that while in Turkey, he sent what he earned to Birsen. She then transferred funds to Mrs. Meydaner so that Mrs. Meydaner could pay for the family and household expenses. He explained that he did not send the money directly to their joint bank account because the bank fees were expensive and he wanted to minimize those costs. He denied that he flowed the funds through his sister as a means of controlling Mrs. Meydaner’s spending.
67Once the matrimonial home was sold, and after Mr. Meydaner spent seven to eight months in the United States with Birsen, he returned to Turkey. In this time frame, Mr. Meydaner did not seek any employment. He said that he had investments in Turkey to support his needs. He also said that “some investments went very well and some went very bad”.
68When asked about any efforts to upgrade his skills and education, Mr. Meydaner said that he took “countless courses” but those efforts did not help in the IT world. The market was very competitive, and he lacked experience. He felt he was up against the wall when it came to his education and associated skills.
69Mr. Meydaner put into evidence his Turkish Personal Tax Returns for the years 2012 to 2019. They recorded Mr. Meydaner’s 50% rental income earnings from a commercial property, Polaris, which I discuss below. The total gross income reported in 2012 was TRY40,500. By 2019 the reported income rose to TRY71,625. In each year there was a range of TRY10,000 to 14,000 in deductible expenses, suggesting annual net earnings from TRY30,375 to 60,881. Mr. Meydaner also put into evidence his Canadian Notices of Assessment for the years 2013 to 2017. In 2013, his Notice of Assessment recorded a total income of $6,570. After that year, Mr. Meydaner’s Notices of Assessment did not report any income.
ii. Mr. Meydaner’s Investments and Current Income
70Mr. Meydaner testified that in 1989, just before he returned to Turkey to get married, he liquidated all of his Canadian assets and as a result had a net worth of $425,000CAD. Mr. Meydaner did not produce any records to support that estimate. What he did produce was a table where he listed five residential real estate transactions between 1985 and 1989 and reported on the purchase and selling price for each property. The table also indicated that Mr. Meydaner advanced a 25 per cent down payment for each purchase. With the exception of one of the properties, which was Mr. Meydaner’s principal residence, the other four were investment properties. The table did not include any information about the mortgages on the properties, the capital expenses, possible extraordinary expenses, or the transactional costs associated with the purchases and sales, such as real estate commissions and legal fees.
71Once in Turkey, he bought a condo for $60,000. When he got married, he and Mrs. Meydaner used that condo as their matrimonial home. In and around that time, Mr. Meydaner said that he invested very substantially in Nortel shares but lost that investment when Nortel went under. Mr. Meydaner also said that he bought a second condo for $65,000. Then, when they returned to Canada, he made a down payment of $60,000 against the purchase of the matrimonial home.
72Mr. Meydaner did not provide any documentation for any of these transactions. For the condos in Turkey, he gave evidence on the value of the condos but did not say if he paid the full price in cash, if he gave a down payment, what if any mortgage he obtained, or any other related expenses he may have incurred. He did explain that after they moved to Canada he leased out the condos and the rent was deposited in a Turkish bank account. No other documentation of that bank account or particulars concerning the rent were provided.
73Mr. Meydaner told the court that the two condos were sold in 2006 for $274,272. He produced a letter from Fatos dated April 27, 2006 that reported to him on the transactions. The communication does not indicate if the funds were in Canadian or U.S. dollars. Fatos did indicate that $175,000 would be invested in Park Orman and $100,000 would go towards the purchase of a summer house investment in Antalya. She also reported about the marketing of a real estate development called “Dome” and said that such a purchase would result in a very good return for them. She went further to suggest that they could even buy the other lands adjacent to the Dome project to “start even bigger projects”.
74Mr. Meydaner explained that Fatos was a graduate of the University of Toronto. She owned a Re/MAX franchise in Turkey. In 2006 she was marketing opportunities to European investors and she also let her own family know about investment opportunities.
75Mr. Meydaner was cross-examined extensively on the table that Mrs. Meydaner found on his laptop which purported to outline Mr. Meydaner’s and his family’s real estate holdings. That document recorded Mr. Meydaner’s assets to be as follows:
3 Park Orman Units @ “150K YTL”, (Turkish Lira)/each for a total of 450,000YTL
50% of Polaris = $250,000 USD
Equity in Canadian Home = $360,000 CAD
7 Dome Units @ 100KUSD each = $700,000 USD
In total, Mr. Meydaner’s total assets were recorded to add up to US$1,610,606. The table indicated that Fatos relied on the following exchange rates: US$1 USD = YTL 1.35, and CAD$1 = US$0.83. Mr. Meydaner said that he did not know how his sister arrived at the total sum of $1,610,606. Contrary to that figure, Mr. Meydaner said that his net worth at the time the table was prepared was about $245,000. He also disputed the listed exchange rate and said that it was have closer to $US1 = YTL1.20.
76Mr. Meydaner said that Fatos prepared the document, sometimes referred to as a table and other times as a spreadsheet, in 2006. In his view, it reflected an aspirational projection of the potential returns on their various investments. He specifically noted that the figures were grossly inflated and proceeded to explain that conclusion with reference to each listed investment.
77POLARIS PLAZA: Mr. Meydaner said that he bought this office space in 2004 for $300,000. It is located in the Mazlak District of Istanbul. He said he owned the property with his sister and that it was a commercial rental property. The rent they received was deposited into a joint account with his sister. Mr. Meydaner managed that account and explained that from the joint account he then transferred his 50% share to his personal account and the other 50% to his sister’s account. Mr. Meydaner relied on various, though not comprehensive, bank statements associated with Polaris Plaza. With respect to a value of $250,000 for his share of the property that was listed in the table prepared by Fatos, Mr. Meydaner said that this was exaggerated and that after the financial crisis of 2008 Polaris Plaza had lost its value, such that the listed figure was not accurate. That said, in his Net Family Property Statement (NFP), he agreed that a value of $260,000 was an appropriate figure.
78He also said that as of July 2019, the tenant had left the premises because he could not afford the maintenance fees of $1,000 a month. When the premises were leased, the tenant paid a monthly rent of $2000.
79In cross-examination, Mr. Meydaner said that even though the property was only in his name, his actual share was 50 per cent while Birsen owned the other 50 per cent. When asked specifically about why Mrs. Meydaner’s name was not included on title, Mr. Meydaner responded that it did not occur to him to because in Turkey “spouses share everything”.
80PARK ORMAN: Mr. Meydaner said that he and his family invested in what was to be a high-rise condominium project and they had very high hopes over the anticipated return. He said they were “ecstatic” over the potential of these investments. He explained that he borrowed from his secured line of credit account with TD Canada Trust the sums of $50,000 & $101,000 for the purposes of the investment in this project. He explained that he transferred the funds through a Montreal account, as opposed to a Toronto account, because he was working in Montreal. He denied that he made the transfer through the Montreal account to conceal the purchase from Mrs. Meydaner. He said that Mrs. Meydaner knew about the investment. But he also said that the investment “was good for myself and my parents’ interests”.
81Their hopes for a profitable return fell to the side when the developer ran into difficulties and failed to complete the project. He explained that the builder was “Demo Insaat”. Demo lured investors into Istanbul with very low capital requirements and the investments were made to look very attractive. After a couple of years of construction, the developer took the money and disappeared, leaving the building unfinished. As a result, the units lost their value and Mr. Meydaner and his family lost their money.
82At a later point in his testimony, Mr. Meydaner changed his explanation of what occurred with the project. He said that Project Park Orman, which was not in a residential area of Istanbul but in the “Green Area”, started off well. Eventually, after four or five stories were completed, the project ground to a halt. The builder did not run away but rather, he ran out of money, started to have disputes with the landowner, and never completed the project.
83In support of his evidence, Mr. Meydaner produced a copy of a decision of the Turkish Court dated November 2, 2010, which purported to confirm the builder’s failure to complete the project.
84DOME PROJECT: This was another high-rise residential project by the same builder of Park Orman. Mr. Meydaner explained that these units were marketed in a way that would allow for a very low investment with the promise of very substantial returns. Although his original plan was to invest in seven units, given the loss of his investment in Park Orman, he did not proceed with it and never advanced any funds to his sister.
85OKKALAR BUSINESS CENTRE: In 2011, when Mr. Meydaner was working in Turkey, he came across an opportunity to purchase an office space and he decided that this was a good investment for his mother. Having regard for the appreciation of the matrimonial home and what he described as “super low interest rates”, he decided to draw down on the line of credit against the home to purchase the office space and therefore, to put the money to work. He explained that his mother was strapped for cash and the rental income from the commercial space would support her.
86Mr. Meydaner said that he did not say anything to his wife about this purchase, even though he asked her to wire him the money. He explained: “I used the $200,000 for my mother.” He also said that his wife had no business knowing about the investment, even though he was using matrimonial equity to buy his mother a property. He reasoned that he was in charge of all their finances, that the funds were the product of his own savings, and that accordingly he could do what he wanted with those funds.
87When he was challenged about Mrs. Meydaner’s exclusion from this decision, Mr. Meydaner said that the original plan was to buy a residential property for the family so that they could return to Turkey. As he started to look around, Mrs. Meydaner kept “dragging her feet” and she resisted the idea of the move altogether. He concluded that there was no point in buying a place and decided that it would be better to buy a place for his mother. With money sitting idle in the line of credit, he decided that this was a good time to help his mother, who was having a hard time.
88In cross-examination, Mr. Meydaner said that he never turned his mind to whether the funds he used to buy his mother the commercial condo were a gift or a loan because he was never concerned about how to characterize the transfer; his immediate concern was to help his mother. He said, “I really did not think about whether she would pay me back. What crossed my mind was that when she passes away I would inherit the property.”
89Mr. Meydaner went on to explain that his mother has not repaid any of the purchase funds and he did not see any such prospect. He then added that while she receives the rental income of about $1000 from this property, in exchange, he uses his mother’s Canadian pension benefits for his financial needs. In a later part of his testimony, Mr. Meydaner admitted that he did not expect to get repaid from his mother’s estate for the purchase of the property. He varied his answer on what will happen with the property once his mother died to say that he expected to inherit this particular property. He also said that his sisters were very aware of the office purchase because he discussed everything with them.
90CURRENT INCOME: Mr. Meydaner testified that at the time of the trial, his only income was his Turkish pension in the sum of $450 per month. He said that since July 2019, he has been redirecting those funds to the payment of the maintenance fees for Polaris as the space remained vacant. When Polaris is leased, his 50 per cent share of the rent represents an additional income source for him.
91When asked about how he supported himself, Mr. Meydaner explained that since 2014 he has lived with his 89-year-old mother in Izmir, Turkey in “a very nice and spacious three-bedroom condo” in the city centre of Izmir that his mother owned. His mother, who used to live in Canada and is a Canadian citizen, receives Old Age Security (“OAS”) from Canada and Mr. Meydaner has access to those funds. In the context of this evidence, Mr. Meydaner testified that he managed his parents’ funds and that he, along with his sisters, has a power of attorney for their mother. No documents were produced to confirm title to the condo in Izmir or anything related to the management of his parents’ funds.
92As already noted, Mr. Meydaner added that his mother received rental income from the Okkalar Business Centre as well as a Turkish pension. Both sources of revenue were deposited into his mother’s Turkish account. Mr. Meydaner also said that he did not have any access to these funds.
93Mr. Meydaner added that he owes a significant sum of money to his mother and his sister, for a total of $40,000. He produced a document that purported to document a loan of $20,000 from his mother, which he said remained outstanding. He also produced a table that purported to record loans from Birsen for the period of August 2011 to December 2012, as well as certain repayments by Mr. Meydaner to Birsen. As of December 2012, the debt to Birsen was reported to be $3,453.50. When asked about how he intended to repay the loans, he suggested that he would use the rental funds from Polaris and his Turkish pension. He added as an afterthought that he may have some other savings on the side but nobody asked him to elaborate on that last comment.
iii. Mr. Meydaner’s Bank Accounts
94Mr. Meydaner put into evidence select statements of accounts from various Canadian and Turkish bank accounts. Included in those accounts were certain savings accounts identified as “ELMA” accounts. Among them was a statement for an ELMA account with a balance of $24,942.52 in a secure fund and cash in hand of $2,429. The statements revealed consistent simultaneous deposits and withdrawals of specific funds to and from various accounts. They also recorded extensive activity with deposits, withdrawals, transfers, references to investments, rental payments, corporate payments, and card payments. In short, the statements documented money coming into an account and money going out, but it was not possible to always trace where the money came from or to where the money was transferred.
95Mr. Meydaner did not disagree that the accounts revealed the simultaneous depositing and transferring of funds. He suggested that some of these transfers reflected loan payments from him to his sisters. Other accounts were flow-through accounts for the deposit of rental income from his two condos and then Polaris. He also had an account where he deposited his Turkish pension.
96Mr. Meydaner denied that the bank documents revealed a systematic pattern of investments by Mr. Meydaner, his sisters and his mother, to the exclusion of his wife. He said that as a spouse, under Turkish law, Mrs. Meydaner was entitled to share equally in all his investments. Having already said that Mrs. Meydaner had no business knowing about the purchase of Okkalar with matrimonial funds, in this instance he said that Mrs. Meydaner was fully briefed and up to speed on all of his transactions and investment activities. As for his activities with his sisters and his mother, Mr. Meydaner said that none of them were independently wealthy but together, they pooled their resources to undertake various investments.
97Mr. Meydaner admitted that he held a joint Canadian account with his mother. He said that this was used for the purposes of depositing his mother’s Canada Pension Plan (“CPP”) and OAS cheques. Although at a different part of his testimony Mr. Meydaner said that he used his mother’s CPP and OAS to pay for his legal expenses and in exchange his mother received the rental income from the commercial property, he also said that he could only access the Canadian pension funds with his mother’s permission. That said, he admitted that his mother never objected to his use of the funds whenever he needed her assistance.
iv. Mr. Meydaner’s Parents
98Mr. Meydaner testified that his parents were in Canada until 1985/1986. His father owned a taxi and drove it until 1985. After 1985, his parents returned to Turkey. Mr. Meydaner continued to lease the taxi plate from 1985 until 2005. He said that he sent the money earned to his parents but there was no documentary evidence to support that contention. In 2005, Mr. Meydaner said he sold the plate for $120,000 and his parents used those funds to invest in two three-bedroom units in Park Orman.
99Mr. Meydaner also explained that a few years after his parents returned to Turkey, his father contracted a rare form of leukemia and he returned to Canada for treatment. He denied that they stayed with his family in Mississauga or that Mrs. Meydaner cared for them. He also denied that he helped his parents complete the paperwork to obtain social assistance.
v. Social Assistance
100Mr. Meydaner was asked about applications he made for social assistance, as well as the applications submitted by Mr. Meydaner’s parents. With respect to his own application, he said that he needed to access social assistance for a short period of time when he found himself in financial difficulty. He added that he needed Mrs. Meydaner to sign the application but he agreed that he initiated the request.
101With respect to his parents, Mr. Meydaner responded with a rhetorical question to the effect that he did not see anything inappropriate with his parents applying for social assistance when they returned to Canada for his father’s chemotherapy treatments. Since they had lost their $120,000 investment in the Park Orman investment, it only made sense that they apply for housing. At this point in his testimony he agreed that when his parents returned for his father’s treatment, they did stay with them. But he then denied that Mrs. Meydaner cared for them. He said instead that Mrs. Meydaner did not get along with them and they felt compelled to find a place of their own. He then admitted that his parents relied on his assistance and guidance, just like Mrs. Meydaner did, and said “that is only natural”. He also agreed that he managed their funds. Mr. Meydaner’s father died in April 2010.
vi. Mr. Meydaner’s relationship with his sons
102Mr. Meydaner agreed that he did not have a very good relationship with either of his sons. He described Hasan as a “disturbed kid” with emotional problems. He said that his son was unable to finish high school. While in grade 10, he mixed with the wrong crowd at the public school and that caused him to change. As a result, he could not find work, he would get frustrated, and he would blow up. His temper was such that when he “blew up” he punched holes through the drywall. Regarding the suicide attempt, Mr. Meydaner verified that the incident occurred but said that they “caught it on time.”.
103At a later point in his testimony, Mr. Meydaner said that Hasan did not want to work and that he was “a very irresponsible kid”. When asked if he did anything to arrange for counselling for his son, Mr. Meydaner said that he tried to talk and reason with his son, but it did not work. He expressed the frustration that he did everything he could to provide for and care for his family but that nothing was appreciated.
104As for the 2012 incident between him and Hasan, Mr. Meydaner admitted that this unfortunate incident occurred. He also admitted that he refused Mrs. Meydaner’s request for a loan to pay the retainer fee to Hasan’s lawyer. However, he said that he advanced $5,000 for bail and a friend of his came forward as the surety. Eventually, he talked to his wife and together they decided that he would not press charges against his son so that Hasan would not be left with a criminal record. Mr. Meydaner said that his son served his bail time and was released. In cross-examination, he summarized the outcome of the incident as a situation where the police took his son away and then his wife filed for divorce.
105When asked about any current attempts to communicate with Hasan or to support him as a father would, Mr. Meydaner said that his son had failed to reach out to him. He expressed the hope that Hasan would realize that Mr. Meydaner cared for him and that things would get back to normal. He had no explanation of how Hasan would come to such a realization.
106Mr. Meydaner testified that he had a better relationship with Selim. He explained that in his Answer he sought custody of Selim and reasoned that Hasan could stay with his mother in Canada while he could take Selim to Turkey. He explained that higher education in Turkey was free and Selim could get a great education there. Mr. Meydaner said that he was willing to support Selim in Turkey. He also said that he did not want Selim to follow his brother’s path. He told the court that at one point, he suggested that both of his sons go to school in Turkey but neither accepted that suggestion because they thought of Turkey as being backward. He said that he could understand the reason for those views, even though in reality Turkey is a very modern country and those views were unfounded.
107On balance he said that he maintained communications with Selim but that he objected to paying any child support since Selim decided to drop out of school. In Mr. Meydaner’s view, since Selim did not want to go to school, he should he should have been working. He doubted that Selim attended any course and questioned Mrs. Meydaner’s evidence on this point. He agreed that he paid for Selim’s private school tuition until the separation and that he also paid for the bus expenses once Mrs. Meydaner moved into an apartment. He protested that last payment and described it as wasted money. He said that he would not have had to make such a payment if Mrs. Meydaner had leased an apartment that was closer to Selim’s school.
108Mr. Meydaner also described how in 2012 he found an English teaching job in Turkey for Selim. Although Selim came to Turkey, enjoyed the job, and wanted to stay, the school, which was affiliated with Nile Academy in Canada, did not keep him on. Mr. Meydaner said he tried to convince Selim to stay and that better opportunities would come along, but Selim refused to stay.
109When asked if he discussed his son’s education and his own aspirations for his son with Mrs. Meydaner, he said that he did not talk to her about such issues because she never believed what he said so there was no point.
vii. Birsen Meydaner’s Testimony
110Mr. Meydaner called his sister Birsen to testify in support of his response. Birsen told the court that she is an American citizen and that she has been living in Michigan on and off for 17-18 years. She said that Mr. Meydaner stayed with her for about eight months following the sale of the matrimonial home in 2013. She recalled that he travelled to and from her residence a few times. On one such trip, he could not re-enter the United States because it was the anniversary of 9/11. He looked for affordable housing in Sarnia and London, Ontario, but when he could not find anything, he returned to Turkey.
111Birsen said that her brother had to borrow from her from time to time to meet his debts. Since he was unable to work between 2008 and 2011, she said that she and Mr. Meydaner set up a joint account so that she could help her brother. Birsen transferred money from her own account into the joint account with her brother, and then her brother transferred funds to his own joint account with Mrs. Meydaner. Birsen did not have an answer for why they set up such a movement of funds. In response to repeated questions about this arrangement, she eventually said that she did not charge her brother any interest.
112Regarding the table that listed their various real estate investments, Birsen was very aware of it and confirmed that Fatos prepared it in 2005. She was certain that her parents, her brother, and her sister invested in the “Demo Condos”. Contrary to Mr. Meydaner’s evidence that both he and his parents lost the funds they invested in Park Orman, Birsen said that none of the funds recorded on her sister’s document were actually advanced for Park Orman. She also added that the numbers on the sheet were inflated. In cross-examination she said that Park Orman was never completed. She told the court that she and her family paid $10,000 towards a lawyer’s fees to go after the developer but ultimately, their lawyer told them not to waste their time and money.
113On the subject of her father’s medical condition and her parents’ application for social assistance, she said that she had her father treated at Credit Valley Hospital and then at Princess Margaret Hospital. She said that she got her father into a clinical trial. In cross-examination, she agreed that when her parents came to Canada for medical treatment they stayed with Mr. and Mrs. Meydaner. She agreed that the taxi plate was sold and that $120,000 was invested in Park Orman. She added that her father came to Canada in 2002 and he passed away in 2010. She also believed that he received CPP while he was receiving his treatment and agreed that her mother was still receiving government pension benefits.
114Birsen was cross-examined extensively on the arrangements between her and Mr. Meydaner for the transfer of funds from his account in Turkey to her bank account in the U.S. She eventually admitted that she had no interest in opening a joint account and that its only purpose was to “give money to Mrs. Meydaner”. She said that the arrangement was set up to save the bank charges associated with the transfer of funds from one country to another. She walked back her initial suggestion that Mr. Meydaner owed her $11,000 on account of legal fees, and instead, she conceded that the joint account between herself and Mr. Meydaner was only for the purposes of flowing funds to Mrs. Meydaner. Ultimately, she categorically stated that she had no interest in that joint account.
115Birsen also said that she understood that her mother was receiving a Canadian pension and a Turkish pension. She was also aware that her mother owned an office condo and that it was Mr. Meydaner who bought it for her. She said that her mother was having financial difficulties, that her pension funds were insufficient, and that her brother bought her mother a small office so that she might earn some extra income.
116Birsen also testified that to her knowledge, Fatos borrowed $50,000 from Mr. Meydaner’s line of credit.
117Finally, Birsen said that the relationship between her brother and Mrs. Meydaner was fraught with conflict and sought to recount a violent altercation between them. She said that she talked to Mrs. Meydaner all the time and that Mrs. Meydaner told her repeatedly that Mr. Meydaner should stay in Turkey and just send money to the family. She disagreed that Mrs. Meydaner’s marriage to Mr. Meydaner was traditional or that Mr. Meydaner was controlling and deliberately maintained complete control over the family’s spending and finances. Instead, she said that many women do not want to be bothered by the management of their finances and that they were more than happy have their husbands worry about such issues.
viii. Mrs. Meydaner’s Reply Evidence
118Mrs. Meydaner was recalled to respond to certain specific allegations that were made by Birsen and Mr. Meydaner but that had previously not been put to her. Beginning with the alleged altercation between herself and Mr. Meydaner, Mrs. Meydaner recalled that it was the beginning of Ramadan, in either July or August of one year and that the argument started over the use of the air conditioning. Although she went into a fair bit of detail on what occurred, she said that she did not mention the assault in her pleadings or complain about the incident because she did not want to get Mr. Meydaner into any trouble. She vehemently denied the suggestion that the assault never occurred.
119Regarding her ability to exercise her free will in the relationship, Mrs. Meydaner said that she had to beg Mr. Meydaner to allow her to obtain a driver’s license so that she could take the children to their activities and do the shopping. Eventually he granted her permission and agreed to pay for the associated fees. Mrs. Meydaner amplified her original evidence concerning her inability to spend any of the money in the joint account without Mr. Meydaner’s advance permission. She also said that at no time until her separation did she have a bank account of her own.
120With respect to Mr. Meydaner’s evidence that he offered to open a flower shop for her, Mrs. Meydaner denied it entirely. She said that he raised the idea of her working at such a business, but she dismissed the idea that he would be the one to open such a business for her. In any event, she commented that nothing stood in his way to initiate any such businesses and he certainly did not take any steps to pursue such an idea. She denied watching soap operas all day or being lazy.
121Regarding Mr. Meydaner’s joint bank account with Birsen, Mrs. Meydaner said that she had no idea that such an account existed and only learned of it through Mr. Meydaner’s eventual disclosure. She said she had no idea that Mr. Meydaner bought Polaris jointly with his sister. Nor was she ever told that Mr. Meydaner bought a commercial property for his mother. Finally, she confirmed that there was never any thought of adding her name to the Polaris investment.
ANALYSIS
122Although there were three issues in dispute, the parties focused almost exclusively on equalization and the parties’ respective entitlement. Indeed, the whole trial was driven by these questions: a) does Mr. Meydaner have real estate assets in Turkey that he is hiding? and b) if the answer is yes, what is the value of those assets and how are they to be taken into account in the equalization analysis?
123The answers to these questions rested first and foremost on the credibility of the parties, especially in light of Mr. Meydaner’s resistance to produce any meaningful disclosure. I therefore begin my analysis with my credibility findings and then continue with the application of those findings to my assessment, findings and corresponding orders related to the questions of equalization, child support, and spousal support.
a. Credibility
124Assessing credibility is not a science. In R. v. Gagnon, 2006 SCC 17, [2006] 1 S.C.R. 621, at para. 20, the Supreme Court of Canada held that it is not always possible “to articulate with precision the complex intermingling of impressions that emerge from watching and listening to witnesses and attempting to reconcile various versions of events.” In R. v. R.E.M., 2008 SCC 51, [2008] 3 S.C.R. 3, at para. 49, the Supreme Court of Canada added the further observation that “assessing credibility is a difficult and delicate matter that does not always lend itself to precise and complete verbalization.” In Baker-Warren v. Denault, 2009 NSSC 59, 277 N.S.R. (2d) 271, at para. 19, the court outlined various questions to be considered in evaluating credibility, including any inconsistencies, both as between witnesses, but also within a witness’s own narrative; the logical flow in a narrative; weaknesses and unexplained gaps; motives to deceive; and the willingness to make any admissions against one’s interests. In addition to these guiding inquiries, it is well recognized that a trier of fact may believe all, none, or some of a witness’s evidence and may accord different weight to different parts of the evidence: see for example, R. v. Francois, 1994 CanLII 52 (SCC), [1994] 2 S.C.R. 827, at para. 14; R. v. Howe (2005), 2005 CanLII 253 (ON CA), 192 C.C.C. (3d) 480 (C.A.), at para. 44.
125With all of these guiding principles in mind, I turn to the testimony before this court. Starting with Mrs. Meydaner, I found her both credible and reliable. Although demeanour can never be a significant factor in the determination of credibility, Mrs. Meydaner’s overall disposition, her resolve and determination, and her remarkable poise during her testimony underscored her overall credibility.
126In her testimony, Mrs. Meydaner was forthright and candid. She avoided negative characterizations and described her conduct, her experiences, and her decisions in as neutral a manner as possible. Indeed, it was not until Mrs. Meydaner’s reply evidence, when she was asked to respond to Birsen’s allegations that she swung a “frying pan” at Mr. Meydaner or to Mr. Meydaner’s depiction of her as somebody who was lazy and whose only interest was to watch soap operas, that Mrs. Meydaner provided the court with a more profound window into her reality. Her explanation that she did not want to call the police following the “frying pan incident” because she did not want to get Mr. Meydaner into trouble epitomized her overall disposition. She did not want to rock the boat and she did not want to do anything to get anyone into trouble. Consistent with that disposition, even her decision to separate was driven by Mr. Meydaner’s refusal to loan her $2,000 for Hasan’s problems and her perceived inability to protect her son, and not because of her personal concerns.
127Turning specifically to the answers to the questions that were put to her, they were clear, they made sense, and they were corroborated by the documentary evidence. When she said, for example, that she made up the difference between her own earnings and the expenses she claimed in her financial statement by drawing down on the line of credit funds she withdrew, a review of those numbers and documents confirmed that approach.
128Although Mr. Meydaner relied on Mrs. Meydaner’s withdrawal of the $140,000 immediately following their separation to demonstrate the extent of Mrs. Meydaner’s dishonesty, that argument actually made Mrs. Meydaner’s fears of being left destitute all the more believable. Mr. Meydaner’s pronounced admission that Mrs. Meydaner knew nothing of his $200,000 withdrawal and purchase of the commercial condo for his mother and that she had no business knowing about these transactions verified the extent to which she was kept in the dark about his investment activities. He lived up to the threat that she would never be able to trace his properties in Turkey with his deliberate refusal to produce any meaningful disclosure. Against those admissions, Mrs. Meydaner’s explanation for why she withdrew $140,000 was understandable, even if not necessarily the best course of action. The reality is that her sense of fear and alarm, when she realized that Mr. Meydaner could deplete the matrimonial assets if he wished, became especially poignant when contrasted to Mr. Meydaner’s statement that the $200,000 he withdrew from the matrimonial line of credit was money that he earned and that he could use as he pleased, without any regard for Mrs. Meydaner’s interest.
129Most significant to my credibility analysis was the recognition that whether by design or by accident, Mr. Meydaner and Birsen corroborated virtually all of Mrs. Meydaner’s evidence. For example, they verified that when Mr. Meydaner worked in Turkey in the period between 2010 and 2012, Mr. Meydaner transferred his earnings to support the family through Birsen and that Mrs. Meydaner had to ask Birsen for support. Mr. Meydaner confirmed that Mrs. Meydaner did not have any bank account of her own and that everything was processed through their joint bank account. He confirmed that his relationship was poor with his sons, and indeed went further than what Mrs. Meydaner said in his display of his anger and resentment towards his sons.
130In contrast to Mrs. Meydaner, I found Mr. Meydaner’s evidence to be highly problematic and unreliable. Absent corroborative documents, which were few and far between, it was impossible to believe his evidence. Mr. Meydaner was argumentative, evasive, and gave the court the impression that he made things up as he went along. As he was confronted with one inconsistency after another, he would vary his explanation to try to do better. But in doing so, his evidence became replete with contradictions. For every point he made there was a counterpoint. Of the numerous contradictions, the following stood out as particularly problematic.
131To begin with, in response to the first few questions in his examination in chief, Mr. Meydaner told the court that he was utterly shocked and dismayed by Mrs. Meydaner’s decision to separate. As of the date of separation, he said that the matrimonial home was paid off, there were no debts, he had investments in Turkey, and the family “had everything”. He added that he did everything that he could to provide a comfortable lifestyle to his family, so much so that Mrs. Meydaner was not obliged to work. As he continued to testify, he said repeatedly that over the years, he made good money, that he totally supported his wife and children, and that he spent a fortune on them. He boasted that by 2002 his “thing” was to make real estate investments. Finally, he added that he and Mrs. Meydaner had a family agreement to return to Turkey where they would live comfortably. In short, he implied that Mrs. Meydaner had a good life and should not have had any reason to leave the marriage.
132In keeping with these statements, Mr. Meydaner told the court of his investment earnings from sales in 2002 and 2006. In 2002 he said that he sold an investment that he owned with his sister for $230,000. He did not reveal what he did with those earnings. He agreed that in 2005 he transferred from Canada to Turkey the sum of $150,000 to purchase three Park Orman condos. He also agreed that his sister’s communication to him of April 2006, reporting on the sale of two condos for a total realization of $275,000, was accurate. He also admitted to transferring $200,000 to Turkey for the purchase of a commercial property for his 89-year-old mother.
133Against these statements and gradually through the course of his testimony, Mr. Meydaner’s situation morphed into one of poverty. With the sale of the matrimonial home, only ten months after the separation, Mr. Meydaner said he had to go live with Birsen because he could not afford a place of his own. Birsen gave the same explanation. Then, when he could no longer stay in the United States, he said he was obliged to go live with his mother. By the time of the trial, he said that he was living off a Turkish pension of $450 per month, which in any event he said he had to redirect to cover the maintenance expenses for his commercial property, Polaris. He said that his financial situation was so bad that he had to ask his mother and sister for a loan to cover his legal costs. He also said that he used his mother’s CPP and OAS payments to cover his expenses. At a later point in his testimony, he explained that to avoid the costs of transferring funds from a Canadian to a Turkish bank account, he used his mother’s pension funds here in Canada and his mother received the rental revenues from the “Okkalar” commercial condo.
134But how did he go from being so well off, having everything he wanted, to having no choice but to rely on his mother to support him? On the one hand, Mr. Meydaner boasted about the returns on his investments and how well off he and his family were prior to the separation. On the other hand, but for the support from his mother and his sisters, he would be on the streets. Mr. Meydaner’s depiction of two very different individuals, in very different circumstances, made it very difficult to know what to believe, what to accept as true and what to reject as incredible.
135Insofar as Birsen Meydaner’s testimony and her credibility is concerned, I find that she came to court with a specific agenda to protect her brother and to pile on the criticisms against Mrs. Meydaner. She was both aggressive and defiant in the way she testified, and she refused to answer the questions that were being put to her. She pretended to be confused by some of the questions that were put to her and instead wanted to give a speech. Even her own lawyer had difficulties navigating what should have been a straightforward examination in chief. The only help she did provide to the court was her admission that there was no outstanding loan between her and her brother at the time that Mr. Meydaner was working in Turkey and transferring his funds to her for further disbursement to Mrs. Meydaner.
136For all these reasons, I accept Mrs. Meydaner’s evidence as credible and sincere. Where it conflicts with Mr. Meydaner’s and Birsen’s evidence, I prefer her evidence. As for Mr. Meydaner and Birsen, they compromised their own credibility through their contradictions, their admissions, and through explanations that simply did not make any sense. The only parts of their evidence that I am prepared to accept as true are those that can be corroborated by third-party and arms-length documents. Mr. Meydaner may have been in a very different position had he been forthcoming with his disclosure. Instead, the pronounced deficiencies support the adverse inference that Mr. Meydaner’s consistent and persistent objective throughout this case was to conceal his Turkish assets from this court, much as he said he would do, when he threatened Mrs. Meydaner that she would find herself destitute and on the street as a result of her decision to separate.
b. Equalization
137As I proceed to consider equalization, I pick up on my preceding point to underscore my finding that Mr. Meydaner’s exceptionally limited disclosure regarding his net worth on the date of marriage and his actual assets, and his debts and liabilities on the date of separation made the determination of this issue especially challenging. Mr. Meydaner’s proposed NFP was barely supported by any credible or reliable evidence. Rather, his inputs were estimated in a way that would permit him to claim the remaining net matrimonial home proceeds of about $113,500 held in trust by the real estate lawyer.
138To put the magnitude of Mr. Meydaner’s failings into some perspective, it is useful to begin with the grounding principles of equalization. “Net family property” in the Family Law Act, R.S.O. 1990, c. F.3 (“FLA”), is as follows:
“net family property” means the value of all the property except property described in subsection (2), that a spouse owns on the valuation date, after deducting,
(a) the spouse’s debts and liabilities, and
(b) the value of property, other than a matrimonial home, that the spouse owned on the date of the marriage, after deducting the spouse’s debts and liabilities, other than debts or liabilities related directly to the acquisition or significant improvement of a matrimonial home, calculated as of the date of the marriage;
139“Property” under s. 4(1) of the FLA is defined as follows:
… any interest, present or future, vested or contingent, in real or personal property and includes,
(a) property over which a spouse has, alone or in conjunction with another person, a power of appointment exercisable in favour or himself or herself,
(b) property disposed of by a spouse but over which the spouse has, alone or in conjunction with another person, a power to revoke the disposition or a poser to consume or dispose of the property, and
(c) in the case of a spouse’s right under a pension plan, the imputed value, for family law purposes, of the spouse’s interest in the plan, as determined in accordance with section 10.1 for the period beginning with the date of the marriage and ending on the valuation date.
140Although the FLA does not define “debts and liabilities”, s. 4(1.1) says that they include contingent tax liabilities in relation to property.
141In addition, s. 4(3) of the FLA is clear that the onus to prove a deduction or an exclusion rests with the person who seeks it. Moreover, parties are required to provide their financial disclosure to allow for the fair adjudication of the family law matters in dispute. Current and up to date Financial Statements and NFP statements, together with supporting documentations, must be exchanged from the beginning of the trial and right through to trial: Family Law Rules, O. Reg. 114/99, r. 13; Federal Child Support Guidelines, SOR/97-175, s. 21.
142In Roberts v. Roberts, 2015 ONCA 450, 65 R.F.L. (7th) 6, at para. 11, the Court of Appeal for Ontario described the duty to disclose financial information as “the most basic obligation in family law.” It was also described as immediate, automatic, and ongoing. The Court noted that the failure to abide by this principle “impedes the progress of the action, causes delay and generally acts to the disadvantage of the opposite party. It also impacts the administration of justice. Unnecessary judicial time is spent and the final adjudication is stalled”: at para. 12. See also Falcon Lumber Limited v. 2480375 Ontario Inc. (GN Mouldings and Doors), 2020 ONCA 310 at paras. 42-43.
143Rule 1(8) of the Family Law Rules outlines the types of orders that may be made when a person fails to obey an order. It includes an order for costs; a dismissal of a claim; the striking of an application, an answer, a notice of motion, or a motion to change; the disallowance of the subsequent use of a document that was required to be produced in advance of the trial; a postponement of the trial; and even a finding of contempt. The court may also draw an adverse inference against the deficient party to the effect that it would not have been in that party’s interest to fulfill his or her disclosure obligations: Meade v. Meade (2002), 2002 CanLII 2806 (ON SC), 31 R.F.L. (5th) 88 (Ont. S.C.), at paras. 44, 81.
144At the same time, when it comes to drawing an adverse inference from the lack of information, the court cannot simply make up a value of the assets and debts in a marriage. Nor can the court take a guess at what assets exist, what assets have been dissipated, and what values to assign to those assets. In Drygala v. Pauli (2002), 2002 CanLII 41868 (ON CA), 61 O.R. (3d) 711 (C.A.), the Court of Appeal cautioned that there must be a rational basis underlying any amount imputed as income. The principles in Drygala also apply to the determination of asset values for the purpose of equalization: there must be a rational basis to the selection of any asset value: see Studzinski v. Studzinski, 2020 ONSC 2540, at para. 11.
145Finally, where there is non-disclosure or inadequate disclosure, the Court of Appeal for Ontario, in Mullin v. Sherlock, 2018 ONCA 1063, 19 R.F.L. (8th) 1, at para. 45, outlined the following factors to be considered when weighing the implications of such conduct to identify an appropriate remedy:
The relevance of the non-disclosure, including its significance in hindering the resolution of issues in dispute;
The context and complexity of the issues in dispute, understanding that an uncomplicated case should have little tolerance for non-disclosure, whereas a case involving extensive valuation of assets may permit some reasonable delay in responsiveness;
The extensiveness of existing disclosure;
The seriousness of efforts made to disclose, and the explanations offered by a defaulting party for the inadequate or non-disclosure; and
Any other relevant factors.
146Turning then to the parties, on Mrs. Meydaner’s side of the equation, there was no disagreement that her net worth on the date of marriage was zero. It was also generally agreed that her only substantial asset was her half share of the matrimonial home and that on her side of the debts, she owed $100,000, on account of Mr. Meydaner’s $200,000 withdrawal in 2011 from the line of credit.
147Much was made by both parties about including Mrs. Meydaner’s withdrawal of $140,000 from the matrimonial line of credit after the date of separation, and counsel for both parties submitted draft NFPs including that sum as a debt on the date of separation. But that approach was wrong. Mrs. Meydaner’s withdrawal occurred after the date of separation, and it is therefore to be accounted for and reconciled after the equalization is determined.
148In Mr. Meydaner’s case, his financial position was anything but clear. In light of my profound difficulties with his credibility and his deliberate failure to produce financial disclosure that was meaningful, comprehensive, and reliable, the task of determining the inputs to his NFP was rendered exceptionally difficult and in specific instances, impossible. If there is an example that would validate the Court of Appeal’s observation that the failure to meet one’s disclosure obligations causes delay, disadvantages the opposite party, impacts the administration of justice and results in the loss of unnecessary judicial time and resources to make sense of what little is produced, this case is it.
149To set the challenge in its appropriate context, I cannot ignore the fact that Mr. Meydaner was given 14 opportunities, between July 2013 and January 6, 2020 through multiple interim court orders, to produce his disclosure. The trial was adjourned twice, in large measure because the disclosure was incomplete, though he also changed counsel at least three times and by the trial before me was on his fourth counsel. The implication in these adjournments was that if Mr. Meydaner were given more time, he would comply with his obligations.
150By the time that this trial was commenced, Mr. Meydaner produced two volumes of documents, consisting of 140 tabs. However, by the end of the trial, out of a total of 56 numbered exhibits, only a fraction of Mr. Meydaner’s document collection was extracted and presented as evidence in support of his claims. To be clear, although Mr. Meydaner’s two volumes were labelled Exhibits “B” and “C” to the trial for identification purposes, only those documents that were admitted into evidence and marked as numbered exhibits are being considered in this judgment.
151Insofar as the quality of Mr. Meydaner’s documentary evidence is concerned, while the documents he produced offered some glimpses into his financial position, it was woefully inadequate. In some instances what Mr. Meydaner produced amounted to little more than smoke and mirrors, offering no meaningful evidence to allow for the identification of a credible value for the purposes of an equalization calculation.
152Finally, I find that Mr. Meydaner’s failure to call his sister Fatos, who was intimately familiar with his real estate investments and transactions, was deliberate and intentional. Fatos was in an excellent position to verify, corroborate and otherwise assist Mr. Meydaner with his disclosure and his evidence. She was the author of two critical documents – the 2006 table of family investments and her letter of April 28, 2006 – both of which I admitted into evidence. Mr. Meydaner’s explanation that she lived in Turkey, making it very difficult for her to attend, was not credible. Although counsel made some reference to the possibility of her testifying by Skype, there was no formal request to the court and ultimately, Mr. Meydaner’s counsel advised that they would not be making such a formal request to enable Fatos’ participation. This failure, together with Mr. Meydaner’s inadequate disclosure opened Mr. Meydaner up to a number of adverse inferences, which I discuss below.
i. Mr. Meydaner’s net worth on the date of marriage
153Starting with Mr. Meydaner’s net worth on the date of marriage, his claim to a $425,000 deduction was incredible and unsupported by any reliable evidence. To begin with, I note that in the course of his testimony he shifted his claim from a sum of $615,000, to $450,000, and then to $425,000 with tremendous facility and as if the difference between a claim of $615,000 and $425,000 was insignificant. That facility with which he shifted from figure to figure was the first red flag to his claim.
154Then, the documents he produced to support his claim were limited to copies of the purchase and sale listings and parcel registers for five residential properties that he bought and sold in the period between 1985 and 1989, prior to the date of marriage in March 1990. As I will explain below, Mr. Meydaner’s attempt to create a table of transactions and related figures and calculations offered certain information, but it raised more questions than it answered, and ultimately supported a net worth of something much less than $425,000.
155Mr. Meydaner’s explanation that he did the best he could but was unable to obtain the required documents because the real estate transactions dated back from 1985 through 1989, was highly doubtful, if not entirely untruthful. Apart from a letter from the Toronto Dominion Bank that confirmed that Mr. Meydaner had been a client since 1989 and that the bank could only go back ten years into their records, there was no evidence that Mr. Meydaner made similar inquiries with whatever institutions he used for his banking and financing activities. For example, if he were only a client at TD Bank from 1989 onwards, where was he doing his banking before 1989? He certainly was using the services of a bank given his admission that he typically advanced 25 per cent of the purchase price as down payment and financed the balance of the purchase price. In addition, the parcel registers recorded various charges. Mr. Meydaner provided no evidence on the names of the institutions from which he obtained financing and did his banking. He also did not demonstrate any effort to obtain the required information.
156The table and the figures that Mr. Meydaner did produce were only marginally useful. The table listed the addresses for five residential properties, the price for which each was purchased, the down payment for each purchase, and the subsequent sale price. The table also includes the dates for the purchases and sales. The table does not include any information concerning the mortgage financing for each property or the costs associated with each transaction such as legal and real estate commissions, and it is silent on any capital costs. Mr. Meydaner told the court that, with the exception of one property, the four were tenanted, but he did not give any evidence on possible rent revenues or how they may have figured in his overall debt obligations. In short, Mr. Meydaner’s table set out only the gross asset values, without any regard for the debts and liabilities that would have impacted his net worth.
157While I am prepared to accept that Mr. Meydaner liquidated certain real estate assets just prior to his return to Turkey in 1989, his failure to offer any explanation, never mind any documentation, as to where he deposited the funds that he earned or what financial instruments he may have used to grow his alleged net worth compounded his disclosure failures, made it impossible to find a net worth of $425,000.
158His evidence that he bought a condo apartment with a value of $60,000 prior to his marriage was of some assistance, and I discuss that below. But his suggestion that he invested substantial funds in Nortel was not supported by any credible evidence. Mr. Meydaner could not complain of any unfairness over the consideration of this issue because he was given more than 12 court orders and 2 trial adjournments to enable him to complete his disclosure, to no avail.
159The dearth of evidence on this subject leaves me with two options: a) to deny any deduction on account of Mr. Meydaner’s net worth at the time of marriage; or b) to work with Mr. Meydaner’s documents to arrive at a value that is rational and grounded on the very limited evidence that Mr. Meydaner chose to produce. The first option, which was what Mrs. Meydaner’s counsel asked the court to do, is entirely consistent with the Court’s direction in Roberts. It would also be easier to dismiss Mr. Meydaner’s claim on the basis of an inadequate evidentiary foundation.
160But to do so would feed into a false narrative that Mr. Meydaner’s real estate activities were met by failure after failure and that by the time of his separation he had little more than his Turkish pension and part of a commercial investment. To be fair to Mr. Meydaner, even on his limited documentation, he had some assets at the time of his marriage. I am prepared to find that on the totality of the evidence before the court, at the time of his marriage, Mr. Meydaner had started growing his nest eggs. That egg did not have a value nearly as high as $425,000, but it had a value. This finding is consistent with Mr. Meydaner’s testimony that by 2002, real estate investments, and not his computer science training and career, was his “thing”.
161Given Mr. Meydaner’s evidence that he started to build his real estate portfolio by buying and selling real estate properties with down payments of no more than 25% and then reinvesting his net gains in new purchases, certain communications between him and his sister about investment prospects, and an almost continuous movement of funds across various bank accounts between Mr. Meydaner and his sisters, I have no difficulty finding that his “thing” with real estate investments had its roots in his real estate investments in the period between 1985 and 1989, even if those initial earnings were modest. The question for the purposes of a fair equalization is to determine the value of that “nest egg”.
162Even with all the noted deficiencies in Mr. Meydaner’s table of transactions between 1985 and 1989, it offers some benchmark figures with which to work and ultimately fix a reasonable figure for Mr. Meydaner’s net worth on the date of marriage. Beginning with the sum of $450,000, Mr. Meydaner came to that figure by adding his gross earnings from five real estate transactions of $314,000 with the sum of $136,375.00, which he said represented the total sum of down payments he advanced over time. But since the down payments were used to make the purchases, they should have been deducted from the gross earnings instead of being added. Assuming that Mr. Meydaner actually advanced 25 per cent of the purchase price as a down payment, the figure of $136,375.00 would have to be subtracted from the gross gain instead of being added. Such a subtraction nets $177,775.
163I cannot make any findings on account of mortgage liabilities and I therefore have no way of determining the appropriate deduction for those expenses. However, having regard for the fact that, on the figures provided, Mr. Meydaner lost significant funds in one transaction, barely broke even in a second one, made a modest gain in a third one, and had respectable gains in the last two, I can conclude that Mr. Meydaner had liabilities. The best I can do with that finding is to take it into account at the conclusion of this review when I fix Mr. Meydaner’s net worth.
164Leaving his liabilities aside, Mr. Meydayner’s reference to five properties involved five purchase and five sale transactions. Each transaction attracted legal costs and a real estate commission. Using a conservative estimate of $1500 in legal costs for each transaction, the total legal costs come to $15,000. These costs should be deducted from the sum of $177,775, to arrive at $162,775. For the real estate commissions, Mr. Meydaner spoke of a 3 per cent rate at one point in his testimony. If I apply that rate to each of the transactions, Mr. Meydaner paid approximately $64,614 in real estate commissions and that sum would also to be deducted from the sum of $177,775, leaving a little over $98,161, before any deduction for mortgages capital costs and any other liabilities. I can therefore conclude on a balance of probabilities that Mr. Meydaner’s net worth on the date of marriage was something less than $98,161.
165The last step in my determination of Mr. Meydaner’s net worth is to consider his evidence on any investment activities immediately following the liquidation of his real estate holdings. I give no weight to Mr. Meydaner’s alleged investment of over $225,000 in Nortel shares because he did not produce any evidence whatsoever related to any such activity. He was also never clear about when he bought such shares or when he lost that alleged investment.
166I do admit and give weight to the “Official Document Prepared by Land Titles Registration Office” from Turkey that Mr. Meydaner was able to obtain and that purported to document the purchase of a residential condominium on March 3, 1990, just days before Mr. Meydaner got married. Mr. Meydaner also said that he used funds he had on the date of marriage to buy a second condominium in Istanbul and to advance a down payment for the matrimonial home he eventually bought in Canada. Mrs. Meydaner verified those purchases and confirmed that in the first few months of their marriage they lived in the condo that Mr. Meydaner bought before their marriage. An additional document that Mr. Meydaner produced purported to document the purchase and sale of a residential condominium in Izmir, Turkey though little else was said about that property.
167Mr. Meydaner estimated the value of the condo he bought on March 3, 1990 at $60,000, but he did not support it by any documentary evidence. Nor did he offer any evidence to show that he actually paid $60,000 CAD or financed the purchase in some manner. For example, there was no evidence of any money transfer or deposit or any legal documents to confirm the purchase. The only documentary evidence related to the price of the condo unit came from the Official Document, which recorded a purchase price of TRY24,000,000. Mr. Meydaner explained that although this sum, when converted into Canadian funds, was indeed much lower in value than his estimate of $60,000, parties in Turkey will typically record undervalued prices to minimize their tax liabilities.
168To be fair to Mr. Meydaner, he was not asked any questions, either in his examination in chief or in cross-examination about the details of that purchase. However, relying on his past alleged pattern of advancing only a 25 per cent down payment and financing the rest and his evidence that his salary was very modest, I conclude that Mr. Meydaner used the equivalent of $15,000 for a down payment and financed the balance of the purchase price.
169Given his additional real estate purchases very soon after his marriage, his purchase of a condo in Istanbul allegedly for $65,000, and the purchase of another condo in Izmir for an undisclosed sum, with which Mrs. Meydaner agreed, I am prepared to find that Mr. Meydaner had sufficient pre-marriage assets to permit him to grow his investments further. To be clear, although I am not including the values of any properties purchased after the date of marriage to fix Mr. Meydaner’s net worth on the date of marriage, his investment activities immediately following his marriage reveal a modest capacity on the date of his marriage to continue his real estate investments. Given the three purchases, if he advanced $15,000 for each purchase, that would reveal available funds of at least $45,000. In the absence of any substantial information concerning the condo in Izmir, I draw the adverse inference that it was an additional purchase. I fix an additional $15,000 on account of that property, suggesting to me a net worth of $60,000 CAD on the date of marriage.
170The implication of this analysis is that from a net figure of about $98,161, see specifically paragraph 164, the remaining $60,000 represents Mr. Meydaner’s net worth, and $38,000 represents his unaccounted liabilities. Having regard for Mr. Meydaner’s various transactions, this breakdown appears reasonable. In the result, having regard for all of the limitations presented by Mr. Meydaner’s unsatisfactory disclosure, I fix his net worth on the date of marriage at $60,000.
ii. Assets Acquired During the Marriage
171Mr. Meydaner’s submission that his post-marriage assets were limited to his share of the matrimonial home and his 50 per cent share in Polaris was grossly understated and contrary to his own evidence. As I already explained, I find that Mr. Meydaner did everything he could to conceal from the court his actual assets. Where he admitted to their existence, it was because the limited documentary evidence he produced left him with no choice. For example, he could not conceal the transfer of $200,000 in 2011 from his matrimonial line of credit to his Turkish account in Turkey. He therefore had to come up with an explanation of how he used those funds but at the same time put enough of a distance in his continued connection to those funds to prevent their inclusion in his NFP statement. The reality is that Mr. Meydaner engineered his disclosure to produce just enough documents to justify his claim for an equalization payment in his favour. I find that he chose to engage in a very deliberate shell game with the court, leaving me with the task of having to understand and reconcile his investments in Park Orman, Dome Project, Okkalar Business property, and a total of $390,000 in admitted gains from other real estate transactions.
172Before I turn to my specific analysis of each asset, it is important that I comment on the admissibility and reliability of two documents that offer evidence with respect to Mr. Meydaner’s real estate holdings. The first is Fatos’s 2006 table of family assets. The second is Fatos’s reporting letter of April 2006 summarizing Mr. Meydaner’s real estate transactions.
173Initially, the admissibility of Fatos’s 2006 table was contested. Mrs. Meydaner produced the document and explained that she found it in Mr. Meydaner’s computer folders. In the absence of any other evidence, Mrs. Meydaner’s counsel presented this as an evidentiary hook against which to determine the magnitude of Mr. Meydaner’s real estate holdings. By the time they took the stand, both Mr. Meydaner and Birsen agreed that the table was prepared by their sister and referred to it in extensive detail. Mr. Meydaner said that the document was prepared in 2006 and that Fatos wanted to provide the family with an aspirational overview of their real estate holdings. He said that the figures were grossly exaggerated projections and reflected the enthusiasm of a young professional investor. He added that Fatos was a very accomplished real estate agent who worked with developers and who brought the family into various opportunities.
174Birsen echoed Mr. Meydaner’s evidence with the exception that she situated its creation in 2005. She all but described the document as nonsense, even though the numbers attributed to her holdings were relatively modest. Eventually, given the extensive reference to the document, I decided it was appropriate to admit the document into evidence, not necessarily for the truth of its contents but as part of the narrative and a point-in-time reference document.
175Substantively, I make the following findings about Fatos’ table. First, as I will discuss in greater detail below, for those figures in the table that could be compared to Mr. Meydaner’s bank accounts, I find some remarkable coincidences that suggest to me that Fatos’ figures were anything but inflated. Where the recorded figures could not be corroborated, they were nonetheless remarkably consistent with the evidence that showed the various money transfers.
176Although I note certain arithmetical errors in the calculations and am alive to the discrepancies likely caused by the recording of those figures in, thereby requiring some extra caution, in light of Mr. Meydaner’s decision not to call Fatos as a witness, I draw the adverse inference that with the exception of some arithmetical errors, the information contained in the document are by and large accurate and reveal some very substantial investment activity. This finding is reinforced by the fact that the document was prepared at a point in time when Fatos would not have had any reason to create a false narrative. To be clear, I consider it as one of very few corroborative puzzle pieces to my overall analysis.
177Fatos’s reporting letter of April 27, 2006 was adopted by Mr. Meydaner as true and therefore posed no issues of admissibility.
178Finally, my findings below are considered against Mr. Meydaner’s overriding statement at the very outset of his testimony that he was shocked by Mrs. Meydaner’s decision to separate, that they were well off, that he had no debts, that he had investments in Turkey, and that he and Mrs. Meydaner were preparing to move back to Turkey. Although the ground gradually shifted on each of these points as Mr. Meydaner tried to reframe his position with reference to each asset, on the totality of the evidence, his original statement actually lined up very well with both of Fatos’s documents and with the limited documentary production.
179Mr. Meydaner’s original statement also lined up remarkably well with the chronology of investments from 1990 to 2012. From the date of his marriage in March 1990 until the date of separation on December 28, 2012, his real estate activities revealed a steady and incremental growth with transactions in 2002 (undisclosed investment with Fatos), 2005 (Park Orman), 2006 (Dome), and 2011 (Okkalar Business Centre). Polaris was not a disputed asset and so there is no need for any finding concerning its inclusion in the NFP analysis. However, I could not situate the date of its precise purchase. I will proceed to make my findings for each of the contested asset holdings.
iii. Okkalar Business Centre
180Of all the assets in question, I find that this was a business investment for Mr. Meydaner’s benefit and should be included in his NFP. His purported arrangement to support his mother was audacious, incredible, and nothing more than smoke and mirrors, designed to pull on the court’s sympathy strings. Most significantly, through his own admissions, Mr. Meydaner validated Mrs. Meydaner’s allegations that Mr. Meydaner held properties in Turkey, possibly in the name of others, to defeat any claim she may have to an equalization payment. I reach these conclusions for the following reasons.
181First, Mr. Meydaner readily admitted to transferring $200,000 CAD in 2011 from the line of credit attached to the matrimonial home and boasted about using that property’s appreciation to pursue an additional investment. He eventually told the court that he saw nothing wrong with what he did because it was his money to spend and use as he wished. He explained that since he had no debt against the matrimonial home, he wanted to capitalize on the home’s substantial appreciation and put the money to work.
182Mr. Meydaner compounded his admission when in response to whether the advance of the $200,000 for the purchase of the property amounted to a loan or a gift to his mother, he said that he never turned his mind to that issue because his primary concern was to obtain a revenue stream to support his mother’s needs. He did not say it was a gift. Instead, he readily admitted that he had no arrangements in place to ever repay the line of credit loan. That response effectively validated Mrs. Meydaner’s fears that Mr. Meydaner would eventually leave her with a very substantial debt.
183Thirdly, just as Mr. Meydaner peaked my interest with his explanation that he wanted to generate a revenue stream to support his mother, raising the possibility of beneficial interests and rights in favour of Mr. Meydaner’s mother, he eliminated such a concern when he admitted that the Okkalar revenue stream more or less cancelled out his mother’s CPP and OAS benefits in Canada. His clarification that his mother received the rental revenues and in exchange he used his mother’s retirement benefits revealed an arrangement that had nothing to do with any altruistic intentions by Mr. Meydaner to provide his mother with extra support. When he realized the implications of his admission, Mr. Meydaner tried to walk it all back by suggesting that he always seeks his mother’s permission to use her Canadian funds. But even that was compromised by his admission that his mother never denies his requests.
184In the result, whether by design or by accident, Mr. Meydaner effectively negated his explanation that the investment was intended to support his mother in her old age and unmasked his attempt to conceal this asset. Mr. Meydaner’s admitted set-off meant that his mother did not derive any benefit from Okkalar. Instead, this particular investment is nothing more than a glorified exchange vehicle for multiple purposes. One purpose is to eliminate bank transfer fees. The second and more serious purpose was to mask Mr. Meydaner’s revenues and therefore keep his income to a minimum. In Canada, the funds he uses belong to his mother and therefore he can legitimately avoid a finding that his income is greater than the minimal sums that he reported. In Turkey, if Okkalar is in his mother’s name, and if the rental revenues are actually received in an account belonging to his mother, then, here too, Mr. Meydaner effectively succeeded in hiding his investment and income-earning tracks, just as he told Mrs. Meydaner that he would do.
185Mr. Meydaner would have made matters much easier for himself if he had chosen to produce the relevant documents pertaining to the purchase of this property, including anything that would document its ownership, its financing, and indeed, the alleged rental revenues. For a transaction that occurred as recently as 2011, at the very least, I expected to see a document from the Official Register, much like or similar to the document that Mr. Meydaner produced for the condo he purchased in 1990. If he could go back to the official records to produce such information about a 1990 purchase, surely he could produce a similar instrument for a 2011 purchase. Indeed, what better way to prove one’s generosity to support an elderly person than to produce the documents to verify title and any other supporting evidence. Mr. Meydaner would not be staring at adverse inferences if he had chosen to assist the court with proper disclosure. Unless of course, such disclosure revealed him to be the owner.
186Having failed to disclose the necessary documents related to Okkalar Business Centre, I draw the following adverse inferences: a) that Mr. Meydaner owns Okkalar; b) that the title to Okkalar is in his name and c) that he deposits the rental revenues either in his mother’s account or in an undisclosed account, with the intention of undermining any ability for the court to follow the money and to make its findings on equalization and even on questions concerning the appropriate level of child and spousal support.
187These findings leave open the question of the value of this property. Mr. Meydaner had little choice but to admit to spending $200,000 for the purchase of Okkalar because it was the only way to explain the transfer of funds. He clearly expected to make money out of this investment when he said that he wanted to put the funds from the matrimonial home to work, but he produced no valuation of the property and no documents whatsoever to allow the court to make a finding of the property’s value on the date of separation in 2012. He also produced no evidence concerning the property’s actual purchase price. Did $200,000 represent the full purchase price or was it just the down-payment? If it were just the down-payment, then what financing is in place, and what percentage of the total purchase price did the $200,000 represent? What are the rental revenues? Are there maintenance fees or other capital costs? If the purchase was financed, what are those costs?
188All of the noted questions are relevant to a valuation analysis. However, in the absence of any evidence on any of these relevant questions, the only figures that are available to the court for its consideration are the advance of $200,000 either for part of, or the whole of, the purchase price, and an alleged rental revenue stream of approximately $1,000 a month. Accordingly, for the purposes of an equalization analysis, I fix its value at the sum of $200,000 and add the property to Mr. Meydaner’s assets on the date of separation. I am alive to the fact that this figure may only represent a fraction of the property’s value and that fixing the value at just $200,000 may be a windfall to Mr. Meydaner. However, it is the best figure I can find given the totality of the evidence.
iv. Park Orman
189The evidentiary narrative associated with the investment in Park Orman was dubious and left many unanswered questions. More to the point, although Mr. Meydaner lamented repeatedly his loss of this investment, he did not produce any evidence to connect him personally to such a loss. For the reasons that follow, I draw the adverse inference that on the date of separation, Mr. Meydaner continued to own condo units at Park Orman.
190To begin with, Mr. Meydaner did not produce any documents whatsoever to describe the nature of the investment or the terms of the agreement. Both he and Birsen told the court that they retained a lawyer and paid as much as a $10,000 retainer to go after the developer and to recoup their original investments their investment but that the lawyer eventually told them that there was no use to pursue the developer. But neither witness saw it fit to obtain even a letter from that lawyer confirming the noted conclusion. More to the point, presumably, Mr. Meydaner and his sister provided the lawyer with sufficient information and copies of documents to allow the lawyer to give that opinion. The production of such documents at trial would have gone a long way to bolster Mr. Meydaner’s credibility and corroborate the loss. Their absence is a significant adverse red flag.
191Secondly, although Mr. Meydaner tried to rely on a Turkish Court decision, SS. Gur Basak Knut Yapi Kooperatif v. Demo Insaat San. Ve Dis. TIC. A.S. 2010/1312 to corroborate his contention that the developer abandoned Park Orman and ran away with the funds, the decision did not go that far.
192Before I go any further, although neither side raised any concern, I expressly note that the introduction of a foreign decision raises admissibility and hearsay considerations. Having regard for the applicable principles, both statutory and in common law, see R v. Caesar 2016 ONCA 599, and Davies v. Clarington et al. 2015 ONSC 3805, the decision could be admitted as a judicial or public record, but not for the truth of its contents.
193But even if the said decision could clear the admissibility hurdles and be relied on for the truth of its contents, there is nothing in that document to suggest, much less support, a finding that Mr. Meydaner suffered any losses. If anything, the judgment confirmed that as of May 2009, one building block was 25.95% completed and the other was 44% completed. There were no findings that the defendant developer had abandoned the project or had gone bankrupt, as Mr. Meydaner asked me to find. In the absence of proper disclosure, I draw the adverse inference that Mr. Meydaner did not lose his investment.
194Insofar as the value of this investment and the monies that Mr. Meydaner spent is concerned, Mr. Meydaner’s evidence did not add up. Mr. Meydaner testified that he purchased three units at Park Orman for $150,000 and believed that the development offered significant potential because of its location in the “Green Area” of Istanbul. However, the monies he said he advanced told a different story.
195The various bank transfers revealed the following activity: $101,000, and $50,000 in Canadian funds were transferred out of Mr. Meydaner’s TD Canada Trust into one of his Turkish bank accounts in September and October 2005. Although Mr. Meydaner said that the funds were for the purposes of the Park Orman investment, Mr. Meydaner did not produce any documents to show the transfer of those funds from his Turkish account to Demo Insaat.
196Then, on October 11, 2005, Mr. Meydaner transferred directly to Demo Insaat the sum of $172,840 from what appeared to be a different bank branch of TD Canada Trust and a different bank account. In addition, on October 14, 2005, Mr. Meydaner transferred to Demo Insaat an additional sum of $38,000 in four instalments.
197If I accept Mr. Meydaner’s evidence that the sum of $150,000 was for Park Orman, it means that Mr. Meydaner invested a total of $360,840 into this project. When confronted with that conclusion, Mr. Meydaner tried to reframe his explanation to suggest that this figure included his parents’ investment in the same project of $120,000 and that he facilitated the transfer of their funds, which were saved in a Canadian bank account. But that explanation confused matters even more. Even if $120,000 were on account of his parents’ investment, it still means that Mr. Meydaner invested $240,840 in Park Orman and not $150,000, or $172,840, as he would have the court believe. Moreover, there was nothing in the evidentiary record to verify that the $120,000 belonged to his parents.
198Against these conflicting figures, Fatos’s recording of Mr. Meydaner’s Park Orman investments in her spreadsheet comes in to triangulate this analysis in a remarkably consistent manner. According to her figures, Mr. Meydaner’s total investment in Park Orman came to $365,000 CAD. On Mr. Meydaner’s numbers, inclusive of the $120,000 he attributed to his parents, the total investment comes to approximately $360,000. Such a comparison reveals a difference of only $5,000 between Fatos’s figures and the monies recorded in the various bank statements. As much as Mr. Meydaner characterized Fatos’s table as aspirational, the Park Orman purchases were made in 2005, well before the table was prepared. By 2006, Fatos knew about both the purchase price for each Park Orman unit and the number of units that Mr. Meydaner bought. The coincidence in figures is too close to treat Fatos’s analysis as aspirational. I find that there was nothing aspirational to that data, at least as it related to the investments in Park Orman.
199As with my analysis concerning Okkalar, Mr. Meydaner could have avoided these contradictions had he been forthcoming with his disclosure and had he called Fatos to testify, but he chose not to do so. For the reasons already discussed, and in light of the coincidence in the analysis, I draw the adverse inference that Fatos’s analysis is accurate. When I consider that inference together with the selected bank statements, I can only conclude that Mr. Meydaner’s evidence on the value of Park Orman and his alleged loss of that investment exposed one more misrepresentation by him.
200Builiding on the foregoing, and for the purposes of equalization, given Mr. Meydaner’s exceptionally limited disclosure, I draw the further adverse inference that he did not lose his investment in Park Orman. I also conclude that his investment in 2005 was $360,000 CAD. In the absence of any valuation and any credible evidence that Mr. Meydaner lost this investment, the sum of $360,000 CAD is to attach to the value of Park Orman and it is to be included in his assets as of the date of separation. As with my valuation of Okkalar Business Centre, I am mindful of the six or seven year gap between the date when he purchased the Park Orman units and the date of separation, and the prospect that the units either appreciated or depreciated in value. However, Mr. Meydaner had the onus to prove his assets and he chose instead to withhold his evidence to be deceptive about his overall activities.
v. Dome Project
201As with Park Orman, I find Mr. Meydaner’s evidence with respect to Dome to be incredible. Far from being an investment that he never pursued, the sparse evidence before the court suggests the contrary. To begin with, his explanation that he was initially interested in the project but then chose not to proceed with an investment because of his negative experience with Park Orman was highly suspect and made sense only as a reconstructed narrative informed by the benefit of hindsight.
202The reality is that on Mr. Meydaner’s own evidence, even if Park Orman ultimately amounted to a failed investment, there was no evidence that the Park Orman project was in any kind of trouble in 2006. The narrative in the Turkish court decision references a warning that the plaintiff issued to Demo Insaat on May 7, 2006 about the progress of the project, but more significantly, it identified May 24, 2009 as the date of completion. The court proceeding, which resulted in the termination of the agreement between the plaintiff and Demo Insaat, was not commenced until February 2010 and the agreement between the plaintiff and Demo Insaat was declared terminated only on November 2, 2010.
203Unless Mr. Meydaner had other sources of information concerning Demo Insaat’s difficulties, which he chose not to disclose to the court, in 2006, he did not have any reason to question an investment in Dome. To the contrary, in April of 2006, Fatos was promoting this project as a very good investment and indicated that it “will be a very good return for us”. Combined with Mr. Meydaner’s own acknowledgment that Demo Insaat was a very large company with many projects on the go and his steady enrichment of his real estate portfolio, the inference to be drawn is that Mr. Meydaner went ahead with the purchase.
204Fatos’s letter of April 27, 2006, which Mr. Meydaner adopted as true, supports my findings in two ways. First, she purported to report on the sale of Mr. Meydaner’s two condominiums for US $274,272 and confirmed that she received the funds. She then confirmed that she intended to reinvest $175,000, leaving Mr. Meydaner $100,000 to purchase a summer house in Antalya. Mr. Meydaner tried to explain that the $175,000 went towards the purchase of Park Orman. However, as I reviewed in the preceding section, the funds for Park Orman were transferred several months prior to this communication from Canadian sources. When asked for further clarification on this point, Mr. Meydaner said that he used $175,000 to repay his personal line of credit.
205In the abstract, that did not sound unreasonable, except for one concern. If that is what happened, Fatos would have had to deposit the said funds into some account and Mr. Meydaner would have had to transfer monies back to the TD Canada Trust account from where he originally transferred his funds so that he could repay his debt on the line of credit. But Mr. Meydaner chose not to produce any documents to trace the movement of those funds and therefore to support his testimony. In this instance, TD’s communication to Mr. Meydaner to the effect that they only keep records for ten years, making it difficult for Mr. Meydaner to satisfy his disclosure obligations, is of no assistance because any documents relating to his 2006 investment activities were within Mr. Meydaner’s reach at the time of separation and in any event up until 2016. By then, Mr. Meydaner had already accumulated a few court orders requiring his disclosure so he could not deny his obligations. Mr. Meydaner should have, and could have, produced the records to show the monies being transferred by Fatos to one of Mr. Meydaner’s Canadian accounts. He chose not to produce any records of any such reimbursement. I therefore find that his evidence on the use of the sum $175,000 USD to be one more misrepresentation to the court and further conclude that the said monies were not used to invest in Park Orman.
206Which begs the question: what investment is Fatos talking about in her April 27 letter if not Dome? Curiously, she also mentions the idea of buying additional lands next to the Dome complex to “start even bigger projects.” The idea of starting projects that were bigger than Dome does introduce potential questions about whether or not Fatos’s actual relationship to Dome was arms-length and whether she and Mr. Meydaner actually went ahead with the purchase of the adjacent lands. However, as this dimension of Mr. Meydaner’s activities was not explored, in the absence of other evidence, I would be speculating if I were to draw any inferences from that one isolated comment. The inference that is available to me and that I draw is that the sum of $175,000 USD was invested into the Dome project and that $100,000 USD was invested in the summer home. These inferences explain why the bank records that Mr. Meydaner produced did not record the deposit of the said funds into any Canadian account.
207Both Mr. Meydaner and Birsen said that Mr. Meydaner did not advance any funds to Demo Insaat for the Dome project. That evidence was probably true, but not because Mr. Meydaner used the funds for other purposes. He did not have to advance any funds because Fatos already held the funds from the sale of the condominiums and she undertook to invest them as she reported. Most remarkably, $175,000 represents 25 per cent of $700,000. In her table of 2006, Fatos recorded the full value of the seven Dome units at US$700,000.
208Two patterns crystallize from this analysis. First, Mr. Meydaner’s 25 per cent investment in Dome is consistent with his admitted behaviour of investing 25 per cent of a purchase price in a real estate transaction and financing the rest of the investment. Second, but for the production of Fatos’s letter confirming the said investment, Mr. Meydaner’s limited disclosure would have made it impossible for Mrs. Meydaner to track down the Dome investment. His investment behaviour in relation to Dome reveals a pattern whereby Mr. Meydaner worked through others to make his investments. In the case of Okkalar, he used his mother as the foil. In this instance, he relied on his sister to manage the movement of his funds and his investment activities. This mode of operation effectively validated Mrs. Meydaner’s reporting of Mr. Meydaner telling her that she would never be able to trace his assets and investments. The reality is that Mr. Meydaner resisted proper disclosure to the end. In doing so, he failed to appreciate the implications of any adverse inferences by the court.
209These findings still leave the question of how to value this particular investment. At first blush, Fatos’s recorded value of $700,000 in USD for the seven Dome units comes across as an outlier relative to his other investments. However, it is not nearly as problematic when one considers Mr. Meydaner’s stated general practice of investing 25 per cent up front against the realization that the sum of $175,000, available to Fatos to invest, represented 25 per cent of Dome’s full value. Apart from the fact that this finding leads to the further conclusion that there was nothing aspirational to Fatos’s table, it means that Mr. Meydaner’s investment in Dome was very substantial and that the Dome investment had a value of substantially more than the 25 per cent down payment.
210That said, as with Park Orman and the Okkalar Business Centre, there was no evidence before the court on the value of the Dome units as of December 28, 2012, the date of separation. My finding that the sum of $175,000 represented a 25 per cent down payment also means that Mr. Meydaner incurred certain debts and liabilities for the balance of the purchase. It is also reasonable to infer that in renting out the units, Mr. Meydaner would have used the rental revenues to finance the debt. He would have also had to incur capital costs to maintain the units. Added to this whole analysis is the recognition that Fatos reported the values for this investment in U.S. dollars. Although she provided the exchange rate for 2006, the relevant exchange rate for my purposes is the one applicable in December 2012. Neither party saw it fit to provide the court with the exchange rate for that period.
211More to the point, my adverse inferences can only go so far. In the absence of any other evidence, it is impossible to know if the units appreciated or depreciated over time. The only value with which to work is the sum of $175,000 USD. In the absence of any evidence on the applicable exchange rate, I take judicial notice of the fact that in 2012 the Canadian dollar was on par with the U.S. dollar, see Bank of Canada, Foreign Exchange Rates for 2012. Accordingly, having regard of the foregoing concerns and considerations, for the purposes of equalization, I fix the value of the Dome units at $175,000 USD.
vi. Other Monies
212There are two other assets for the court’s consideration. The first relates to Fatos’s indication that Mr. Meydaner could invest the sum of $100,000 USD in a home in Antalya. No other evidence was led on what happened to this sum of money or whether Mr. Meydaner bought the summer home. Mr. Meydaner had the opportunity to provide the court with a credible explanation, but he failed to do so. Accordingly, I draw the adverse inference that he bought the summer house with the said funds. As with the other properties, I am unable to account for any appreciation, depreciation, sales, debts, or liabilities that would necessarily impact the actual value. Using the best available evidence, I fix the value of that investment at $100,000, also in USD.
213That leaves the court with the question of what happened to the sum of $115,000 that he earned from the real estate investment with his sister that he sold in 2002. In the absence of any explanation and having regard for my finding that Mr. Meydaner engaged in a deliberate pattern of concealing his investment activities, I draw the adverse inference that the sum was reinvested into some financial instrument or real estate property. On the basis of the same principles that I applied to the values of the other investments, I fix the value of this investment at $115,000.
vii. Debts and Liabilities
214In Mr. Meydaner’s various iterations of his NFP, he submitted that he owed his mother and Birsen monies on account of various pre-separation debts. I found those claims unreasonable and unsupported by any credible or reliable evidence. With respect to the alleged loan from Mr. Meydaner’s mother, apart from the fact that the alleged loan figure waivered anywhere from $20,000 to $40,000, the promissory note was unreliable. To begin with, there was no evidence of any contemporaneous acknowledgment of the note by the lender, namely Mr. Meydaner’s mother. Instead, Mr. Meydaner produced a document purporting to be a confirmation by his mother of a series of debts that were allegedly incurred from May 2, 2007 to February 28, 2011. The confirmation was dated October 29, 2016, well after the date of separation. It is a wonder that if these loans were credible, they were not reconciled with Mr. Meydaner’s generous purchase of Okkalar. This observation reveals one more reason to support the conclusion that Okkalar had nothing to do with Mr. Meydaner’s mother and that there has never been any loan between Mr. Meydaner and his mother.
215My second concern with the promissory note is that the signatures on the document are of no value. On the evidence before me, the said instrument was signed by Mr. Meydaner and witnessed by Birsen. Having witnessed the very deliberate collaboration between the two in their testimonies in this trial, their signatures do not mean anything. I have no way of knowing when the document was actually generated, when the sums were advanced, and when it was signed.
216Finally, Mr. Meydaner failed to produce any reliable accounting to support the alleged loans. Although the bank statements he chose to produce revealed a dizzying and unexplained collection of funds being moved from one account to the next and simultaneous deposits, withdrawals, and/or unexplained transfers as between himself and his sisters, I could not locate any such exchanges or transfers between Mr. Meydaner and his mother. Accordingly, I reject his claim as it concerns his mother.
217Similarly, by the time Birsen testified, the alleged loan that Mr. Meydaner said he received from her had all but disappeared. Mr. Meydaner’s fanciful explanation that he arranged for his salary in the period between 2010 and 2011 to be paid to Mrs. Meydaner by way of a transfer to Birsen Meydaner, because he owed Birsen money, collapsed when Birsen Meydaner admitted that this arrangement was put in place only for flow-through purposes and that there was no underlying loan. Accordingly, I conclude that there was no such debt to Birsen on the date of separation. If there were ever any loan from Birsen to Mr. Meydaner, it was repaid prior to separation.
218Finally, Mr. Meydaner’s claim that the payment of Selim’s private school fees be treated as a loan of some sort to Mrs. Meydaner and that she therefore share in that debt is not reasonable. Although I note that the court left such a reconciliation open to further consideration, there was nothing in the evidence before me to allow for such a treatment for the school fees. As I discuss below in my consideration of child support, the fees amounted to a s. 7 special expense and in all the circumstances were rightly paid out of Mr. Meydaner’s share of the matrimonial net proceeds.
219Before I leave the subject of debts and liabilities, leaving aside Mr. Meydaner’s very clear and blunt statement that on the date of separation he had no debts, that he had investments in Turkey, and that they were well off, it would be astounding if Mr. Meydaner did not have any debts and liabilities arising out of his real estate holdings. However, such evidence would have required Mr. Meydaner to come clean with a comprehensive disclosure and a complete valuation of those holdings. Given his conduct, I can only conclude that Mr. Meydaner made a conscious decision to forego the benefit of such deductions.
c. Equalization calculation
220In light of the preceding findings, I come to the conclusion that Mrs. Meydaner is owed an equalization payment of $621,500. I have reached this conclusion on the basis of the following inputs.
221Beginning with Mrs. Meydaner, I find that her NFP statement consists of $308,500 in real estate, $4,000 in general household items and vehicles (which she admitted to in her NFP), $1000 in savings, and $100,000 in debts and other liabilities. The $100,000 represents her 50 per cent share of the line of credit withdrawal of 2011. As of the date of separation, that debt was outstanding. Mrs. Meydaner has no date of marriage deductions or excluded property.
222For Mr. Meydaner, I find that the value of his assets, based on my preceding findings, comes to a total of $1,518,500, as follows:
Matrimonial Home: $308,500 CAD
Polaris: $260,000 CAD
Okkalar: $200,000 CAD
Park Orman: $360,000
Dome: $175,000 USD
Summer home: $100,000 USD
2002 Investment: $115,000
TOTAL: $1,518,500
223I find an additional total of $96,000 in funds held in various bank accounts and “ELMA” accounts. I accept Mrs. Meydaner’s submission that this is the sum of the various figures and references contained in the bank records that Mr. Meydaner produced. I am mindful that some of the figures in the bank accounts may relate to something other than savings or may be attached to the assets I already discussed. While I am alive to the risk of double-counting certain figures, I assess that risk as very low, and in any event, blunted by my use of the purchase prices for the assets noted above instead of valuations, which would be the preferred approach if only such existed.
224I also impute $2,000 in household items, having regard to all of the evidence I heard in relation to the overall value of these items. Mr. Meydaner’s known debts and liabilities consist of the $100,000 on account of his share of the line of credit withdrawal in 2011. For the reasons already discussed, no other credible or reliable evidence was produced to support any other debts and liabilities claims.
225With respect to Mr. Meydaner’s date of marriage deductions, for the reasons already discussed, I fix that sum at $60,000.
226With those total figures and inputs, the value of property owned by Mrs. Meydaner on the valuation date comes to $213,500. The value of Mr. Meydaner’s NFP comes to $1,456,500. The equalization that is therefore owed by Mr. Meydaner to Mrs. Meydaner is $621,500.
d. Child Support
227Child support was the next contested issue, though the efforts on this subject by both sides were half-hearted and shallow. Mrs. Meydaner proposed a scheme that would see the setting aside of a fixed sum of money to give Selim a last chance at returning to full-time studies. Mr. Meydaner was not prepared to agree to any such accommodation and wanted the support rolled back. Rather ironically, he was critical of Mrs. Meydaner’s support of both her sons and her tolerance for their limited to non-existent contributions to their own support, when Mr. Meydaner had no difficulties admitting that he had moved back to live with his own mother because he could not afford to live on his own.
228In my review of the matter, I find that Mrs. Meydaner tried to protect her son and therefore tried to project her son’s efforts to go back to school in the best possible light. However, even she admitted that Selim did not pursue full-time studies after he turned 18. Even if I accept Mrs. Meydaner’s evidence of Selim’s inability to focus, his inability to follow online courses and her indication that he required extra help, I am confronted with some obstacles to the continuation of Selim’s support past the age of 18.
229The Family Law Act and the Child Support Guidelines govern the obligations of a parent to pay child support and to contribute to child care expenses. Section 31 of the FLA establishes the obligation of a parent to support a child. Children over the age of 18 must be enrolled in a full-time program of education or be unable by reason of illness, disability or other cause to withdraw from a parent’s charge. In a very comprehensive summary of the law, the court in Aubert v. Cipriani, 2015 ONSC 6103 underscored the obligation on the party seeking child support to demonstrate the child’s eligibility. The party seeking support must provide tangible evidence of the child’s enrolment and attendance in a full-time program of education. The evidence must also demonstrate that the child’s participation is meaningful from both a quantitative and qualitative standpoint. From a quantitative standpoint, there must be a reasonable degree of attendance by the child. From a qualitative standpoint, the child must demonstrate a reasonable degree of involvement.
230A child may remain entitled to support on the basis of enrolment in an educational program even if their participation and achievement levels are problematic, provided that the child’s effort is within their capability, given their particular circumstances. Finally, the evidence must also establish that the child has remained under parental control and that they remain financially and emotionally dependent on one or both of their parents. This inquiry requires the judge to scratch under the surface of outward appearances to determine whether the child is truly dependent on a parent, or whether their overall circumstances are such that they are independent or reasonably capable of being so.
231In Selim’s situation, I am hard-pressed to find evidence of any diligence. I am very concerned about the lack of any encouragement and support that Selim received from his father to resume his education and complete his high school studies. It troubles me to see an over-protective mother with limited means struggling to do her best to support her son and a father, whose only real objective was to paint his son in the worst light, so that he could eliminate his obligations, to say nothing of the example he set by his alleged reliance for support on his mother. But even with all these concerns, and however liberally I interpret the requirements, the evidence does not support a finding that Selim is engaged in any type of full-time education, or that he is otherwise unable to become independent. I recognize that he has taken some courses, but I see nothing sufficient to find that the courses amounted to full-time study. I listened very carefully to his mother’s concerns that he struggled with some online courses and that in her mind, Selim was doing his best. Although Selim would not be the first to encounter difficulties with online education courses, nothing in the evidence supported a finding that he had any motivation to locate programs to respond to his needs or way of learning.
232In light of these findings, I do not see any basis for an order for child support past Selim’s 18th birthday, which would have been in February 16, 2017. Given the evidence that Mr. Meydaner stopped paying any support after December 2015 and has been in arrears since January 1. 2016, Mr. Meydaner owes 14 more months of child support. On the basis of the existing court order of February 4, 2014, child support at $181 per month over 14 months comes to an outstanding debt of $2,534.
233Insofar as the order of February 4, 2014 is concerned, I have serious reservations with the level of income that was imputed to Mr. Meydaner. Just on the basis of Mr. Meydaner’s admission that he sets off the rent he earns for Okkalar against his mother’s Canadian pension, which he said came to about $1000 per month, would add approximately $12,000 of income to Mr. Meydaner’s imputed income of $22,000. An income adjustment to $34,000 would result in a child support payment of approximately $270 per month, or approximately $100 more per month from January 2013 until February 2017. Having made this observation, Mrs. Meydaner did not ask the court to revisit the order of 2014 to impute to Mr. Meydaner a higher income and Mr. Meydaner did not have the opportunity to respond. Accordingly, it would be procedurally unjust to make any additional changes to the child support payments.
e. Spousal Support
234Mrs. Meydaner’s claim for spousal support with respect to quantum was limited to the terms of the court order of February 4, 2014. She agreed that in light of her employment with Walmart she would not ask for any support after December 2019. Mr. Meydaner disagreed with her claim. His counsel even put out the suggestion that Mr. Meydaner should have been the one to ask for spousal support given his limited income and Mrs. Meydaner’s success at obtaining a job with Walmart.
235Having regard for Mrs. Meydaner’s employment efforts and position at Walmart, I find that it is appropriate that spousal support of $137 per month, as set in the court order of February 4, 2014, come to an end as of December 31, 2019. Although I considered the possibility of rolling back the obligation to the end of 2017, when Mrs. Meydaner obtained her employment at Walmart, having regard for her overall needs, her contributions to the family during the marriage, and the minimal monthly sum, based on a dubious income estimate for Mr. Meydaner, I find that it is fair and just to allow spousal support to extend to the end of December 31, 2019. Accordingly, I agree with Mrs. Meydaner’s submission that spousal support come to an end on that date. On the basis of the evidence before the court concerning Mr. Meydaner’s spousal support debt, my finding means that Mr. Meydaner owes an outstanding sum of $6,576 for spousal support to be paid out of his share of the matrimonial funds.
f. Reconciliation of Findings
236The only remaining task that remains is to reconcile the various figures that have resulted from the above noted findings. The net proceeds from the matrimonial home, immediately following its sale of came to $250,233.82, meaning that each party would be entitled to $125,116.91. As noted above, Mr. Meydaner was ordered to draw on those funds for child and spousal support and other expenses resulting in total payments of $136,860, which exceeds his share. That means that he must reimburse $11,743.09, representing the difference between $136,860 and $125,116.91.
237Mrs. Meydaner’s must account for the $70,000 she withdrew post-separation, from the matrimonial line of credit. Absent any debts by Mr. Meydaner, this sum of money would have been deducted from her share of the matrimonial net proceeds. But having regard for Mr. Meydaner’s various debts, the reconciliation comes down to the following:
Mr. Meydaner’s debts: $621,500.00 equalization payment
$11,743.09 s.7 adjustments
$ 6,576, outstanding spousal support
$ 2,534, outstanding child support
Total: $642,353.09
Mrs. Meydaner’s debt: $70,000.00, post-separation line of credit
Mr. Meydaner’s net debt: $642,353.09 - $70,000.00 = $572,353.09
238Given the remaining net matrimonial proceeds of $113,373 currently being held by Mr. Razi Ahmand, that sum is to be paid out forthwith to Mrs. Meydaner, leaving a balance of $458,980.09 to be paid by Mr. Meydaner.
CONCLUSION
239For all of the foregoing reasons, child support and spousal support payable by Mr. Meydaner will come to an end as of December 31, 2019. On the basis of the reconciliation outlined above, Mr. Meydaner’s remaining debt to Mrs. Meydaner is $458,980.09
240The only outstanding matter is the issue of costs. While I strongly urge the parties to reach an agreement, if they are unable to do so, then Mrs. Meydaner shall have 15 days from the date of these reasons to make her submissions and Mr. Meydaner shall have 15 days thereafter to respond. There shall be no reply unless I ask for it. Submissions by both parties are to be limited to four pages, double-spaced, in 12 pt. Font. The parties shall also include their Bills of Costs and any Offers to Settle.
Tzimas J.
Released: June 23, 2020
COURT FILE NO.: 13-77178
DATE: 20200623
ONTARIO
SUPERIOR COURT OF JUSTICE
B E T W E E N:
Mrs. Hulya Meydaner, Applicant
and -
Mr. Behran Meydaner, Respondent
REASONS FOR JUDGMENT
Tzimas J.
Released: June 23, 2020