S. Heeley

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 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 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.

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.

The applicant father brought an application under the Hague Convention seeking the return of his three-year-old child to California.

The respondent mother had travelled to Ontario with the child with the father's consent but later refused to return.

The court found that the child was not wrongfully removed, as the initial travel was consensual.

Furthermore, the father's subsequent action of shredding the mother's US immigration papers constituted active acquiescence to the child remaining in Ontario.

The court also held that returning the child to California would expose him to a grave risk of harm due to the mother's inability to re-enter the US and the child's special medical needs.

The application was dismissed.