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Video: What is Covered by Support?

By: Steven Benmor, B.Sc., LL.B., Family Lawyer

Jurisdiction: Ontario (Canada)

Support general means, and we use the word “support” like “child support” or “spousal support” or “parent support”, it’s providing financial assistance to the person that needs you to cover their cost of living. [Host: So is that something that is pre-discussed and put into a document prior to marriage or is that something that is visited afterwards?] It’s an interesting question because some people want that to happen. Some people will say, “Look, we’re getting married, or we’re going to get married, or we’re going to have kids, we’re going to live together and have kids, and so I want to make an agreement that says if we have kids this is what my financial exposure is. I don’t mind supporting you when we’re together but when we split up, I don’t want to have to pay more then “$X amount” per month because I want to be able to continue my life independently.” Well the law says that the courts, the Courts of Ontario, will not respect that sort of agreement. In other words, you can’t bargain away, or negotiate, before the kids are born, or even if they are born but before you split up what’s going to be paid to the kids down the road. … (click here for more)

This entry was posted on Sunday, October 14th, 2007 at 12:09 am and is filed under Family Law. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.