Associate Chief Justice Lawrence O'Neil's conclusions in a custody case last year were based on "no evidence." "I am at a complete loss to understand the judge's reasoning on this issue," Justice David Farrar said Tuesday of the Canada-wide arrest warrant. The sharp rebuke of O'Neil's judgment comes more than a year after the Court of Appeal condemned him for creating a "judge-made vortex of uncertainty and delay" in an unrelated adoption case.
Early on the morning of March 9, Jeramey apparently rigged his truck so that when he drove down an embankment at the end of Page Road in Abbotsford, B.C., his neck would break. The horror shows that emerge from Canada’s family courts, those aggressive high-conflict battles that can go on for years, are often complicated and nuanced. On March 8, Jeramey finally signed off on the July 11, 2016, order from B.C. Supreme Court Judge B.J. Brown. His ex-wife is herself a family court lawyer. The woman accused him of assault, he was arrested, the charges eventually stayed. But, of course, he had to pay for a criminal lawyer to defend him. This double whammy — a spouse making criminal allegations while custody and access applications are underway in family court — is known, Angie said, as “the silver bullet.”
A seven-yearold Facebook message has scuttled a conviction against a man accused by his ex-wife of sexually assaulting and threatening to kill her....had it been allowed at trial, could have affected the guilty verdict handed down to the man, who can only be identified as A.B., The Court of Appeal concluded “It would not be unfair to say that the message recounted several incidents of sexual activity between the appellant and complainant, and made it clear that the sexual activity was consensual on the complainant’s part.”
The Ontario Court of Appeal in Spence v BMO Trust overturned a lower court's decision to set aside the will of the late Mr. Eric Spence. The lower court's unprecedented decision to set aside Mr. Spence's will is about as poorly reasoned a legal decision as one is likely to encounter. Its thin reasoning is symptomatic of an emerging convention whereby we seem increasingly willing to suspend reason (and sometimes even law) to reflexively embrace anything couched as a defence of equality.
Few couples realize that no matter how conscious the uncoupling, no matter how determined they are to dissolve their marriage congenially, their finances are likely to be, if not decimated, then at minimum thrown into disarray....both parties should receive independent legal advice before they get married. That does need to be considered because you are essentially asked to sign a financial document without representation. It’s a legal document.”
The high cost of lawyers, combined with the erosion of legal aid and the proliferation of free legal resources on the Internet, has led to the justice system becoming what Julie Macfarlane, a law professor at the University of Windsor, describes as “a completely different universe.” Navigating the courts without a lawyer is a gruelling and daunting experience that has become all too common among Ontario’s growing masses of self-represented litigants.
The deceased Rector Emanuel Spence was allegedly angry with his daughter for having a child with a white man. In a rare decision Newmarket Superior Court judge C.A. Gilmore set aside Spence’s will. The legal proceedings stripped the value of the estate of about $25,000. The money went to the lawyers.
Ontario Victims’ Justice Fund funds the Child and Youth Witness Support Program.A 2009 Department of Justice report estimated that 83 per cent of the costs of violent crime are borne by victims. That includes lost productivity and wages, costs of going to court and medical or psychological care. Proponents of the surcharge argue its mandatory nature helps make up for the shortfall in funding for victim services and that any hardship experienced by an offender who may not be able to pay pales in comparison to the hardship suffered by victims of their crimes.
Is it really possible that Canadian law will uphold an aboriginal right to impose a death sentence upon a cancer-ridden child? — quite a lot that is directly relevant to the controversy has gone almost wholly unnoticed and unreported. The judge in the case, Justice Gethin Edward, is himself a member of the Grand River Six Nations in Brantford. Aboriginal rights’ arguments came before him only because he’d ordered the Six Nations Band to appear as a respondent in the case. Edward is also an advocate of alternative sentencing through Brantford’s aboriginal persons court, which the Six Nations’ council also supports, along with increased powers over child welfare. This is not to say Edward acted improperly or should have recused himself from the case
Federal regulations and guidelines governing spousal support and duration of cohabitation or common law relationships. In cases where there are no dependent children, the without child support formula applies. This formula covers a wide range of fact situations. As well, in some cases the initial determination of support will initially take place under the with child support formula, but once the children are independent, there will be a cross-over to this formula (FV, 14.5) for a determination of amount.
In my opinion, credit must be given to parents who have weaned their children away from childhood egocentricity enabling them in crucial moments of adolescence to pause and make rational rather than spontaneous decisions.
Two recent Ontario Superior Court of Justice decisions illustrate the high cost of family-law litigation. In Weening v. Weening, counsel representing one of the parties involved in a matrimonial proceeding ended up paying costs personally.