New Child Support Tables in Effect

Brand new child support tables came into effect today, just in time for the new year. As discussed in my post "New Child Support Tables for 2012," the new numbers aren't terribly different than the old and lots of payors will see their child support obligations actually decrease. The new tables are available in the version of the Child Support Guidelines presently published by the Department of Justice. You can also use the Department's nifty child support calculator based on the new tables. You can read the notice from the Department of Justice...

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Supreme Court of Canada Releases Decisions on Spousal Support

The Supreme Court of Canada has just released a brace of decisions on the variation of spousal support orders in L.M.P. v. L.S. and R.P. v. R.C. L.M.P. is the primary decision, and R.P. applies the reasoning in L.M.P. in different circumstances. In L.M.P., the wife was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis following the parties' marriage, stopped work and began to receive disability benefits. The parties separated after fourteen years of marriage and a year later, in 2003, signed a separation agreement under which the husband would pay spousal support...

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Cohabitation Agreements and the new Family Law Act:Why you probably want a cohabitation agreement

In a previous post, “Why you DON’T Want a Cohabitation Agreement,” I summarized the law on the division of property between unmarried couples and how s. 120.1 of the Family Relations Act usually made cohabitation agreements a very, very bad idea when the purpose of the agreement was to protect property brought into a relationship.  That’s all changed as a result of the enactment of the Family Law Act on 24 November 2011. Let me explain. Property, unmarried couples and the Family Relations Act Under the Family Relations Act, married...

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Leave Required to Appeal Interim Divorce Act Orders

My friend Agnes Huang, until very recently of the eminent Vancouver firm Schuman Daltrop Basran & Robin, has brought my attention to Elgner v. Elgner, a June 2011 decision of the Ontario Court of Appeal. Agnes and I have had some interesting discussions about the implications of the case in British Columbia which I think should be shared more widely, especially since the Supreme Court of Canada made the decision not to hear Mr. Elgner's appeal in November 2011. The fundamental question raised in Elgner, and left somewhat hanging as a result...

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New Blog on Shari'a Law in America

I've just learned of an interesting new blog, Shari'a Index, which digests significant American court cases addressing Islamic law, features a collection of links to case law, and offers case commentaries on diverse subjects including Muslim finance and the enforceability of Muslim marriage contracts. Although the blog is just getting started, it's already worth a vis...

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Supreme Court Releases Decision on Agents Appearing in Court

The British Columbia Supreme Court has just released a decision, in the case of Ambrosi v. Duckworth, on the right of parties to have people other than lawyers appear in court on their behalf. The problem arises from s. 15(1) of the Legal Profession Act which says that "no person, other than a practising lawyer, is permitted to engage in the practice of law;" s. 85 of the act makes it an offence, punishable under the Offence Act, to contravene s. 15. The Legal Profession Act offers a few exceptions to this general prohibition: a party to an action...

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New Child Support Tables for 2012

The federal Department of Justice has announced new child support tables for the Child Support Guidelines which will take effect on 31 December 2011. The tables were last updated in 2006. According to the Department's notice, the same formulas were used to determine the new amounts as were used in 2006, and any changes in the new tables are the result of changes in federal and provincial tax rules. The changes are relatively minor. Some payors with incomes below $50,000 per year may see their child support obligations decrease: $25,000 income one...

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Family Law Act Receives Royal Assent

Bill 16, the Family Law Act, passed third reading in the provincial legislature on 23 November 2011 seemingly without amendment and received Royal Assent yesterday, according to the legislature's excellent "Progress of Bills" webpage. Although the act is now law, most of it — in fact, almost all of it — is not in force, and will not come into force except by order in council in, according to the Attorney General, 12 to 18 months. Section 482 of the act sets out a table showing which parts of the act are in force now, and which will come into...

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Supreme Court Releases Decision in Polygamy Reference

On 24 November 2011, the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of British Columbia released his decision in Reference re: Section 293 of the Criminal Code of Canada, otherwise known as the Polygamy Reference. The British Columbia Attorney General asked the court to declare whether the prohibition on polygamy under s. 293 of the Criminal Code was consistent with the basic freedoms guaranteed by the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. The decision is a masterwork of legal analysis and I won't offer it the indignity of a synopsis. Suffice it to say that...

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A Reply to the Times Colonist

On 19 November 2011, the Victoria Times Colonist published a somewhat ill-informed editorial concerning the Family Law Act tabled last week in the legislature. As it happens, I like the new legislation, and I thought I'd provide a few comments in reply. Here's the Colonist's editorial verbatim, without a word missing, in red with my comments following. "A case can be made that the new Family Law Act, tabled Monday in the legislature, is the most far reaching social reform of our era. The massive bill completely redefines the civil structures...

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Decision on Role of Illegal Conduct in Family Law Cases

The kerfuffle surrounding the tabling of the Family Law Act has done nothing to staunch the flow of decisions issuing from the courts. That's a good thing, because in the judgment recently released in the case of Daemore v. Von Windheim, the Supreme Court had the rare opportunity to consider how a party's illegal conduct should play into its analysis of a family law problem. The Latin maxim ex turpi causa non oritur actio — no right of action arises from a base cause — often abbreviated as ex turpi or ex turpi causa, stands for the principle that...

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Family Law Act Introduced!

Attorney General Shirley Bond has this afternoon tabled Bill 16, the Family Law Act, for first reading in the Legislature. Assuming the bill becomes law, which seems a near inevitability given the government's comfortable majority at present, the new Family Law Act will completely revamp British Columbia's law on domestic relations and give us the most progressive legislation on relationship breakdown in the country. In this post I will provide a rough summary of the key features of the proposed Family Law Act. Later posts will provide more details...

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