Notice of Administrative Dismissal

Parties who start an action in family court have a certain period of time within which to have their matter set down for trial. One year after the case was started, the court will send out a notice of approaching administrative dismissal to either yourself, if you are self represented, or your lawyer. It’s not…

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Benefits of Joint Applications for divorce

Under the Family Law Rules, when applying for an uncontested divorce, you have the option of starting the Application and then serving it on the responding party, or else cooperating with your spouse and filing the Application, jointly, as co-applicants. The primary benefit of a joint application is that it doesn’t need to be filed…

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Can you benefit by not providing proper financial disclosure?

According to the Court of Appeal in Gray v. Rizzi, the answer to the above question is ‘no’. In this case, a final order from 2005 awarded significant child and spousal support to the wife even though the husband, who was self-employed, had never made proper financial disclosure to the wife. Had he made the…

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Private case management in family law

In 2015, a Toronto lawyer launched a private case management service for family law cases. Why would a litigant in family law consider such a service when there is already a version of case management in the court system? When parties are involved in court proceedings in Ontario, the process will include access to either…

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Threshold for establishing the need for an urgent motion

A recent Ottawa case is a reminder that the threshold for establishing the need for an urgent motion prior to a case conference is a very high one. Absent urgency or an emergency, parties are expected to attend a case conference prior to bringing a motion. What qualifies as urgency is based on a two…

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