CITATION: Miles v. Money, 2026 ONSC 4278
SUPERIOR COURT OF JUSTICE - ONTARIO
RE: Melanie Miles, Applicant
AND:
Peter Money, Respondent
BEFORE: The Honourable Justice J. Mountford
COUNSEL: Melanie Miles, Self-Represented (Agent Yasmeen Zamanian)
Peter Money, Self-Represented
HEARD: July 20, 2026
ENDORSEMENT
1The Trial Management Conference was held and a Trial Scheduling Endorsement Form prepared.
2The Respondent may be serving final Minutes of Settlement and has been urged to seek legal counsel in this regard.
3The Applicant sought to present Affidavit evidence in chief for herself and most of her witnesses, but there are significant problems with this.
4The Applicant’s counsel is not on record, appearing as agent only, and has stated clearly that the Applicant may not in fact be represented at trial. The Applicant’s agent has indicated that her office would at least be assisting the Applicant with preparation of her Affidavit. It is unclear whether this counsel would be assisting the Applicant’s other witnesses with drafting their Affidavits.
5The Respondent is self-represented. He is not in a position to be able to prepare Affidavit evidence in chief.
6The use of Affidavit evidence for a witness’s evidence in chief at trial poses significant problems in any case, and which will all be exacerbated by the issues of representation discussed above. These include:
a. Impeachment of a witness is problematic when the evidence in chief has been prepared by counsel (who may not even be in attendance) and under cross-examination the witness may assert that the issue for which impeachment is in issue was mis-stated by counsel, not the witness. It is an “easy excuse”.
b. Affidavit evidence allows for including evidence in chief which would not have been allowed during a trial with viva voce evidence, including opinion evidence (particularly of non-party witnesses as is sought in this case), child’s evidence (particularly when there is no OCL or VOC involvement as in this case), hearsay evidence (which a judge can quickly stop before it goes into substantive details during viva voce evidence but which will already be fully provided in an Affidavit form) and attaching exhibits which would not be allowed during a trial. In other words, it is a tool that can be too easily abused.
c. The proper order of a trial requires that one witness testifies in chief, followed by cross-examination and then re-direct if appropriate. When all or most witnesses provide Affidavits in advance, there are only two options for the trial judge to address them, neither of which is optimal.
i. Either the judge reads all of the Affidavits in advance (which in this case would only be the Applicant’s evidence), in which case a full picture of the Applicant’s case is fully read and understood before any of it is subjected to cross examination, thereby giving the Applicant a significant advantage.
ii. Or the trial judge awaits being advised by Applicant or Applicant’s counsel as to the order of calling the witnesses and then breaks before each witness to “hear” (read) their evidence in chief and then return to the court to hear the cross examination. This would then be repeated for each witness. This would save no court time whatsoever.
d. There is a tendency in many cases for Affidavits to be far too long and to include far too much irrelevant evidence. In a viva voce trial, the trial judge can easily intervene and assist the parties or counsel with the direction for evidence flow. The trial judge can stop a witness who is rambling on about irrelevant issues. But affidavits do not have such stoppage valves and the trial judge is forced to read voluminous quantities of irrelevant evidence in search of something relevant. The trial judge as archaeologist is not in the interests of justice.
e. A trial judge cannot assess credibility from an Affidavit in any way approaching the ability of that judge to assess credibility during viva voce evidence. Communication is so much more than just words and the voice and body language of a deponent on the witness stand is of much more value to a trial judge than words on a page which have likely been written by lawyer and in some cases edited and revised many times over painstaking hours.
7The disadvantages and risks from Affidavit evidence in chief are significant and the benefits, if any, are unclear. It is very unlikely to be a savings of court time and if it is then there are other risks of unfairness in the trial (and that savings of time is just added onto the backs of the judges who must read the Affidavits on their own time, which is already over-encumbered by a system which leaves shortages of judges as the norm).
8Therefore, the request for an Order for Affidavit evidence of the Applicant and most of her witnesses in chief is denied.
Justice J. Mountford
Released: July 20, 2026
CITATION: Miles v. Money, 2026 ONSC 4278
COURT FILE NO.: FC-22-151-0002
DATE: 2026/07/20
ONTARIO
SUPERIOR COURT OF JUSTICE
BETWEEN:
Melanie Miles Applicant
AND:
Peter Money Respondent
ENDORSEMENT
J. Mountford, J
Released: July 20, 2026