Case law
Recent case: Supreme Court mobility decision
In Barendregt v Grebliunas, the Supreme Court of Canada considered which parent should have primary responsibility for their two young children and whether the mother could relocate them to a town some distance from where they had been living with their father. The family was living in Kelowna, British Columbia, when, following an assault by the…
Read moreRecent family law case: Tort of family violence
Ahluwalia v. Ahluwalia 2022 ONSC 1303 This recent case has taken Ontario’s legal community by storm. Justice Mandhane of Ontario’s Superior Court has awarded the mother in this case $150,000.00 in compensatory, aggregated and punitive damages for the tort of family violence. This is a ground-breaking decision for survivors of family violence and one that…
Read moreRecent case: Disclosure obligations for executive employees
Ali v. Sayilgan 2022 ONSC 2051 In keeping with our theme of exploring financial disclosure obligations in family court proceedings, the following case comment provides a good overview of the proportionality of disclosure where one party works as an executive employee. In this case, the respondent mother brought a motion for production from the applicant…
Read moreRecent case: Cost award based on conduct
D.C.A. v. A.E.C., 2022 ONSC 1002: This recent case demonstrates an effective use of Rule 1(8) of the Family Law Rules, where one party is ordered to pay costs for sending harassing emails to the other even though there was an order limiting communications between them. D.C.A., the applicant father and A.E.C., the respondent mother are…
Read moreRecent case: Parenting time and inflammatory comments
Gill v. Gill 202 ONSC 6803: This case looks at parenting time amidst high conflict between parents and the courts disinterest in seeing inflammatory comments about one party to the litigation. After the parents’ child, E, died in a tragic drowning accident, the father unilaterally assumed sole care of the parties’ remaining child, J. The mother…
Read moreRecent case: Children are not property
Marshall v. Snow et al., 2022 ONSC 1687 This is a carefully thought-out decision by the Honourable Justice Kurz concerning what happens to a child when her primary caregiver passes away and the remaining family members “battle” over who “keeps” the child. While this case does not exclusively focus on family violence, the decision clarifies…
Read moreRecent case: Capacity to marry
Tanti v Tanti 2021 ONCA 717: This Ontario Court of Appeal decision upheld the decision of the trial court to find a marriage between an elderly man with some dementia to a much younger woman valid. Paul Tanti and Sharon Joseph got married in 2019, when he was 89 years old. Shortly after the marriage, his…
Read moreCase update: More on courts and vaccines
This case update was written by Pamela Cross, Luke’s Place Legal Director. A few months ago, I wrote a summary of court decisions about vaccinations for children which reflected a general judicial attitude that courts should follow the government pro-vaccine attitude. Two recent cases, with very similar facts, look at this issue from the perspective…
Read moreRecent cases: legality of religious marriage
Below are two recent cases that examine whether a religious marriage is a legal marriage under civil law, in the context of the wife’s claim for an equalization of net family property. As you will see, the two cases – which present different facts – were decided very differently by the judges who heard them.…
Read moreRecent case: Abuse of counsel may amount to family violence
In Armstrong v Coupland, Madam Justice Chappel applies a broad and nuanced understanding of the definition of family violence contained in the Children’s Law Reform Act (CLRA). The motion, brought by the father for increased and unsupervised parenting time with the young child (almost three years old), was the most recent in a long series of court appearances…
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