Sean D. Heeley

Following a 20-year marriage, the applicant sought sole decision-making, child support, spousal support, and exclusive possession of the matrimonial home.

The respondent, who had a history of non-compliance with court orders and had not seen the children in over a year, sought joint decision-making and shared parenting.

The court granted the applicant sole decision-making and dismissed the respondent's claim for parenting time.

The court ordered ongoing and retroactive child support based on the respondent's disability income, awarded lump sum spousal support to the applicant, and granted her exclusive possession of the matrimonial home to facilitate its sale.

The Applicant, Marcy Lightfoot, sought costs on a full recovery basis following a successful motion for partition and sale of the matrimonial home and interim spousal support.

The Respondents, David Lightfoot and Evelyn Lightfoot, opposed the costs.

The court awarded costs of $29,000 to the Applicant, citing the Respondent David Lightfoot's unreasonable, obstructionist, and contemptuous conduct throughout the litigation, including his refusal to settle and disrespectful behaviour in court.

The decision emphasized that self-represented litigants are not immune from costs consequences for inappropriate conduct.

The applicant father brought a motion seeking equal shared parenting and a corresponding reduction in child support under section 9 of the Child Support Guidelines.

The respondent mother opposed, seeking to maintain the status quo of her primary care.

The court applied the newly amended Divorce Act and the Supreme Court's decision in Barendregt, noting the 'maximum contact principle' has been replaced by the 'parenting time factor' which is strictly subject to the child's best interests.

Finding the father's request was partly financially motivated and that the status quo favoured the mother, the court ordered the children to remain in the mother's primary care.

The father was ordered to pay full table child support and arrears.

The appellant, Anita Csizmazia, appealed an order refusing to set aside a final order made after an uncontested trial.

She alleged misrepresentation and concealment of facts by the respondent, Zoltan Csizmazia, and a significant miscarriage of justice.

The review judge had dismissed her motion, noting that her financial issues were moot due to her bankruptcy and rejecting her claim of lack of notice.

The Court of Appeal dismissed the appeal, finding the review judge's reasons sufficient and affirming that the appellant's bankruptcy rendered her equalization claims moot, thus making it unnecessary to address the fraud allegations.

The applicant father brought a motion to temporarily vary a final parenting order, seeking immediate residential time with his 12-year-old daughter who had refused contact with him for eight months and was suffering from severe OCD.

He also sought to restrict the respondent mother's new partner from attending his parenting time and the children's appointments.

The court declined to force a change in the parenting schedule pending the completion of agreed-upon family reconciliation therapy, finding insufficient evidence to justify a sudden change.

However, the court ordered that the mother's partner not attend events where the father is present to reduce the children's exposure to loyalty conflicts and anxiety.

The applicant mother brought a motion to change a 2013 child support order, seeking to impute an income of $50,000 to $65,000 to the respondent father and claiming retroactive section 7 expenses.

The respondent argued his income was limited due to severe, long-standing mental health issues, including ADHD and depression.

The court reviewed the respondent's medical history and employment efforts, finding he was not intentionally under-employed but was managing his health challenges as best he could.

The court imputed only a modest additional $3,500 to his reported income based on actual earnings from odd jobs.

The court dismissed the applicant's claims for retroactive section 7 expenses, a life insurance order, and a restraining order, but ordered proportional sharing of future section 7 expenses.

The applicant father brought a motion to find the respondent mother in contempt of four court orders regarding his parenting time and an order requiring disclosure of information about the child.

The court found that the mother had willfully disobeyed the parenting time orders by failing to take positive steps to require the 15-year-old child to attend access, instead encouraging the child's estrangement.

The court found the mother in contempt for the parenting time breaches but exercised its discretion not to find her in contempt for failing to disclose the child's babysitting address, reserving the penalty to a subsequent remedies hearing.

The respondent father sought costs following his partially successful motion to regularize access to his 9-year-old child.

The applicant mother had opposed the motion, arguing that increased parenting time should be left to the child's request, a position the court found unreasonable.

Both parties sought costs.

The court rejected the mother's request and awarded the father $1,000 in costs, noting his partial success and the high-conflict history of the case.

The applicant father brought an urgent motion for a temporary parenting order prior to a Case Conference.

The parties, who separated in 2019, had competing proposals for parenting time that differed by only one overnight every two weeks.

The court emphasized the need to focus on the children's best interests rather than parental conflict, and ordered a temporary 2-2-3 rotating schedule providing equal time to both parents.

The mother, who had custody of the parties' seven-year-old child, died suddenly of a drug overdose.

The father brought an emergency motion for temporary custody.

The maternal aunt, who had been secretly caring for the child for the past year due to the mother's substance abuse issues, sought to be added as a party and requested custody based on the status quo.

The court found that the aunt and the mother had actively concealed the mother's struggles and the child's living arrangements from the father and the court.

The court granted temporary custody to the father, concluding that the aunt's deceptive conduct demonstrated a profound lack of insight and an inability to foster the child's relationship with her father.

The applicant sought to enforce a notice of garnishment to collect a $21,082 debt owed by the respondent pursuant to a family law settlement order.

The respondent disputed the garnishment, arguing she could not refinance her home to pay the debt because the applicant had not yet released her from liability on their jointly owned home's mortgage, as required by the same order.

The court found the conditions of the settlement order were not severable and the applicant's fulfilment of his obligations was essential to the respondent fulfilling hers.

The notices of garnishment were quashed.

The Respondent father brought a motion to vary a temporary parenting order, seeking increased parenting time and make-up time with the children, Abigail and Naomi, after the Applicant mother unilaterally suspended in-person contact due to concerns related to the COVID-19 pandemic and the father's employment as an essential worker (bus driver).

The Applicant cross-moved, initially seeking to limit contact to virtual, then proposing limited outdoor visits.

The court found a manifest change in circumstances due to the pandemic and varied the existing order.

It granted the Applicant's alternative request for regular, limited daytime outdoor visits with strict safety conditions, denying the Respondent's request for extended overnight access.

The decision considered the children's best interests, their special needs, the mother's role as primary caregiver, and the health risks to medically fragile maternal grandparents residing with the children.

The applicant father brought a motion for a Christmas holiday access schedule for the parties' 10-year-old child.

The self-represented respondent mother requested an adjournment to retain counsel and asked that her partner be permitted to act as her agent.

The court denied both preliminary requests, noting the time-sensitive nature of the motion, the mother's failure to respond to prior communications, and the partner's inappropriate conduct and potential role as a witness.

On the substantive issue, the court found that the father's proposed schedule, which provided an approximately equal division of holiday time and allowed the child to spend Christmas Eve and morning with the father for the first time since separation, was in the child's best interests.

The motion was granted.

The respondent father brought a motion to enroll the parties' four-year-old child in a public school in Dundas, Ontario, while the applicant mother brought a cross-motion to enroll the child in Jarvis, Ontario.

The parties shared equal parenting time under a temporary order, but lived an hour apart.

The court applied the best interests of the child test, focusing on stability and the child's status quo.

Finding that the child's ordinary residence had historically been Dundas and that the father's plan offered more stability with fewer unsettling features, the court granted the father's motion and ordered the child enrolled in Dundas.

In a high-conflict family law dispute, the Applicant father sought relief, including a contempt finding, against the Respondent mother for her persistent denial of access, non-compliance with court orders regarding passports and counselling, and actions that exposed the children to unnecessary police involvement.

The court, drawing on its extensive history with the file, found the mother's conduct amounted to parental alienation and was detrimental to the children's emotional well-being.

A temporary order was issued granting exclusive residence to the father and severely restricting the mother's access.

The applicant sought costs for a previous motion.

The court awarded the applicant $2,500, less than the $3,300 requested, noting the applicant's partial success and lack of serious settlement effort.

The respondent's position on access was deemed "ridiculous" making settlement unlikely.

The court declined to make the costs enforceable as child support, as the motion did not pertain to child support.

The applicant mother brought a motion for a temporary order changing the terms of access for the parties' four-year-old son pending trial.

The court found that the respondent father had used the existing access order to extend conflict, including improperly keeping the child over Serbian Orthodox Christmas in 2018 and keeping the child out of school during mid-week access.

To minimize conflict, the court temporarily cancelled the father's mid-week access, granted the mother access for Serbian Orthodox Christmas in 2019, and permitted the mother to cancel one weekend access to take the child on a March break vacation.

The appellant appealed a judgment ordering him to pay $386,443.15 for defaulting on a share purchase agreement.

The respondent had originally sought an oppression remedy against the corporation but amended the application to seek personal judgment against the appellant.

The Divisional Court dismissed the appeal, finding that the amendment did not constitute a new cause of action and was therefore not statute-barred.

The court also rejected the appellant's argument that the judgment resulted in double recovery, noting the appellant continued to operate the company and the respondent undertook to return the share certificate upon satisfaction of the judgment.

The applicant father brought a summary judgment motion to finalize parenting issues that had been largely settled by earlier minutes of understanding.

On the day of the motion, the parties agreed to a final consent order on the substantive issues but could not agree on costs.

The court rejected the respondent mother's argument that an unaccepted offer to settle precluded a costs award.

Finding that the applicant acted reasonably and the respondent unreasonably delayed the proceedings, the court awarded the applicant $7,000 in costs.

Following a motion for increased parenting time where the applicant father was granted expanded access, the court determined the issue of costs.

The court found that while the applicant was overall more successful than the respondent mother, both parties had taken unreasonable and overly aggressive positions regarding the time-sharing schedule.

The applicant failed to serve a formal Offer to Settle, and the respondent had limited financial means.

Balancing these factors, the court awarded the applicant $4,200 in costs, representing approximately 50% of his total legal fees and disbursements.