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...

Read More

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...

Read More

Court of Appeal Releases Decision on Child Support Liability of New Parent to First Family

The Court of Appeal has just released an interesting decision on a payor's application to suspend her child support obligation to her first family as a result of being on maternity leave for a new child in her second family. (As you might imagine, it is usually men who are the payors of child support and the situation before the court in McCaffrey v. Paleolog requires the happy coincidence of a mother paying child support while becoming pregnant in a new relationship.) The appeal in this case was complicated by legal issues concerning the history...

Read More

Stepparent Caught by Hole in Family Relations Act

Important Update: The Family Law Act was introduced on 14 November 2011 and contains a number of provisions which are critical to the comments made in this post. See my post "Family Law Act Introduced!" for more information. The Family Relations Act, British Columbia's primary law on domestic relations, is missing something very important: a triggering event for applications involving custody, guardianship, access, child support and spousal support. Nothing in the law restricts how soon an application on these issues can be made; in particular,...

Read More

Court of Appeal Releases Decision on the Cancellation of Arrears of Child Support and Special Expenses

The Court of Appeal has just released its decision in Semancik v. Saunders, a helpful case which reviews and summarizes the law on many common issues relating to applications to cancel arrears of child support and the payment of children's special expenses. Here are the highlights of the court's review of the law: Under s. 96 of the Family Relations Act, the court may only reduce arrears of child support if it would be "grossly unfair" not to do so. A 1999 decision of the Supreme Court called Earle v. Earle held that this requires an applicant...

Read More

Separated with Children Financial Workshop

The Justice Education Society is hosting two workshops in the new year to help parents deal with the legal, emotional, social and financial turmoil of separation. The workshops will deal with: becoming financially independent dealing with your ex and children about money budgeting and debt issues child support, spousal support and property divisions issues The workshops are free. You just need to register ahead of time. Call the society at 604-775-0856 in the lower mainland or at 1-800-775-0856 from elsewhere. VancouverMonday 21 February 2011,...

Read More

Managed Financial Disclosure Service Launched

I've spent the last few days at the Federation of Law Societies of Canada's fantastic national Family Law Program where I learned of a nifty new service designed to facilitate document disclosure where child support is paid. In Ontario, I understand, recent legislative amendments have made the annual disclosure of certain financial documents — tax returns, notice of assessment, pay stubs and so forth — mandatory where there is an order for child support. (The point of this is to give everyone the information they need to keep the amount of child...

Read More

Claims for Retroactive Child Support and Spousal Support

Speaking of the recently concluded National Family Law Program (see the post below), I was fortunate enough to be asked to present a paper at the conference reviewing the case law on retroactive child support and spousal support. Since my paper is too dull to hold any reasonable person's attention for more than twenty seconds, I'll just give you the Coles Notes version. The two really important cases on this subject are D.B.S. v. S.R.G., a 2006 decision of the Supreme Court of Canada on retroactive child support, and Kerr v....

Read More

Child Support and the Income of Payors

G.H. from Vancouver sent me an email with a question that has an interesting answer:"I understand the application of the child support guidelines and these have been built into my divorce order. I do not, however, understand the logic of having the formula based only on the payor income and number of children, and not the payee's income. ... My ex and I make about the same income, we split assets [and] we have joint custody ... yet her income is irrelevant to the size of my payment. I just can't see the logic of that and in situations like ours,...

Read More

BC Supreme Court Issues Important Judgment

Varga v. Varga, 2009 BCSC 416 concerns, among other things, the determination of a husband's obligation to pay child support for two children of his wife's previous relationship and child support for a child of their own relationship when custody of that child was shared.This case involves two tricky questions about child support: how child support should be calculated when custody is shared; and, how a step-parent's child support should be calculated when someone else also has a responsibility to pay child support. Normally, child support is calculated...

Read More

2008 In Review, Part 3: Case Law Roundup

This is an overview of some of the more interesting cases decided in 2008. The summaries below aren't a proper digest of each case, they just focus on the one or two issues which made the case interesting. H(SM) v. P(R), 2008 BCSC This case is a nice update on the law of retroactive child support. The wife sought a retroactive order going back to 2002 based on undisclosed increases in the husband's income. The court said that the simple payment of child support, which the husband had been doing all along, creates a presumption that the payor...

Read More

New Random Answers to Random Search Terms

I am able to review the search terms that lead people to my website. Every now and then, a search term is particularly unusual or suggests an answer that doesn't, and perhaps shouldn't, appear in the website. In this irregular feature, I will randomly reply to these search terms. New Random Answers will reappear at unpredictable intervals. (Remember, the law that's being applied here is the law of British Columbia, Canada, and the laws of one jurisdiction are often very different from the laws of the next.)>> paying for university after separation>>...

Read More

Mediate BC Launches Program Addressing Support for Adult Children

Mediate BC has announced the launch of a new pilot project — the Child Support Eligibility Mediation Project — intended to address the often contentious issue of child support in respect of children who have reached or are approaching the age of majority. According to the society's statement, the aim of the program is to "help separated families resolve disputes concerning the eligibility of adult children for child support and special expenses" by creating an educational plan with the assistance of a mediator.The service free and...

Read More

Tax Court Rules on Deductibility of Legal Fees to Claim or Enforce Support

Ron Hooge, a respected Vancouver chartered accountant and business valuator with SmytheRatcliffe, has distributed a commentary on a recent Tax Court case, Sarophim v. Her Majesty the Queen, concerning the tax deductibility of legal fees incurred in relation to support payments to be made following separation.The basic rule, as I had understood it, is that legal fees incurred to obtain or enforce a spousal or child support entitlement are tax deductible whereas legal fees incurred to defend a support claim are not. The taxpayer in...

Read More