Posts by Pamela Cross
Intimate partner domestic violence in Canada: Remarks to the Standing Committee on the Status of Women
Presented by Pamela Cross, Luke’s Place Legal Director, on March 25, 2022 at 1:00pm Good afternoon. Thank you for the opportunity to speak with you today on this important issue. I am the Legal Director at Luke’s Place in Durham Region. We provide direct services to women who have left abusive relationships and are engaged…
Read moreMaking new law: Damages for abuse
I don’t often read a family court decision that makes me jump for joy, but a recent decision by Justice Renu Mandhane of the Ontario Superior Court of Justice did just that. In this case, Justice Mandhane recognizes a new tort of family violence and awards the wife $150,000 in damages for the pattern of physical and…
Read moreBuilding consistency
Canada’s Constitution Act, in sections 91 and 92, clearly sets out federal and provincial jurisdiction over different aspects of family law. The feds handle divorce, including any corollary issues such as parenting arrangements, child and spousal support and division of property raised in the context of an application for divorce. To provincial – and, by…
Read moreRecent case: Parenting arrangements under the updated Children’s Law Reform Act
Ammar v Smith 2021 ONSC 3204: This case culminated in a five-day trial that focused on parenting arrangements, ownership of the family residence and child and spousal support. This summary focuses on the parenting arrangements issue only. For those interested in the other issues, I encourage you to read the full 88-page decision. The parents…
Read moreFamily violence and parenting coordination
Making appropriate parenting arrangements when there has been a history of family violence can be challenging but, for many families, that is just the first step: once an agreement or court order is in place, the parents must then find ways to make it work, sometimes for many years. This is not easy, as many…
Read moreCourt and vaccines for kids
In the early weeks of the pandemic, some abusers took advantage of the public health crisis to manipulate parenting orders, stop paying child support and, generally, make life for their former partner as difficult as possible. A few months later, the focus shifted to fathers refusing to agree to appropriate schooling arrangements for the children,…
Read moreFamily violence HELP for family law legal advisors
Identifying the presence of intimate partner violence (IPV) in a new family law file has never been easy for lawyers, but help has arrived in an important new tool recently released by Justice Canada. The HELP Toolkit: Identifying and Responding to Family Violence for Family Law Legal Advisors became available in early January, after several…
Read moreRecent case: Fake evidence including electronic records
Lenihan v Shankar 2021 ONSC 330: The legal issue at the heart of this case was on parenting arrangements for the parties’ child, but the decision also addressed the issue of fake evidence, and it is on that topic that this summary is focused. Justice McGee began her decision with these comments: Text messages, emails…
Read moreRecent case: Admissibility of hearsay evidence
Chrisjohn v Hillier 2021 ONSC 1666: In this case, the father brought an urgent motion to have the child returned to him. The mother had withheld the three-year-old child, alleging that the father’s substance use posed a risk. Much of the evidence presented by the mother was hearsay, and Justice Mitrow took the opportunity to…
Read moreRecent case: Moving with children
Bourke v Davis 2021 ONCA 97: This is a decision by the Court of the Appeal, in response to an appeal brought by the applicant, the father, from a trial decision that allowed the respondent mother to move to Washington State with the couple’s two children. The mother had married a man who lived in…
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