Canada Legal .com Articles

Video: Family Court Judges consider family’s heritage ?

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

Toronto divorce lawyer Steven Benmor discusses the question “Do Family Court Judges consider a family’s heritage ?”

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Jurisdiction: Ontario (Canada)

Video: Can I obtain a religious divorce ?

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

Toronto divorce lawyer Steven Benmor discusses the question “Can I obtain a religious divorce ?”

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Jurisdiction: Ontario (Canada)

Video: Why use Arbitrator instead Family Court Judge?

Toronto divorce lawyer Steven Benmor discusses the question “Why use an Arbitrator instead of a Family Court Judge ?”.

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Jurisdiction: Ontario (Canada)

Seven Ways To Survive and Settle Your Divorce or Separation As Soon As You Can And Still Protect Your Legal Rights At The Same Time

by: Thomas O’Malley
Jurisdiction: Ontario (Canada)

Many of the tens of thousands of Canadian who separate or divorce each year fear they cannot settle their cases without a long drawn-out court battle.

“You don’t have to fear in most cases that you cannot settle your separation or divorce in an orderly and reasonable fashion,” advises experienced family law and divorce lawyer, Thomas O’Malley, author of Canadian Divorce and Separation Made Easier and the Easy Canadian Divorce Kit. “You just have to make sure that you follow some key principles that will help you reach a friendly settlement with your spouse.”

O’Malley offers the following tips for settling your separation and divorce as quickly as possible with a reasonable outcome for all parties involved:

• Hire an experienced family law or divorce lawyer immediately. Most spouses procrastinate or delay in trying to settle their separation and divorce legal issues because they don’t understand their legal rights. An experienced family law lawyer will explain your options so you can take action to resolve your case without delay.
• Create a game plan or blueprint. Figure out what you want–what kind of custody arrangements make sense in your situation? What do you need financially? The old expression, “if you fail to plan, you are planning to fail”, applies.
• Educate yourself and ask your family law lawyer good questions. The more you know about family law and separation and divorce legal issues, the more you can work effectively with your lawyer to get reasonable results and a good settlement.
• Get full financial disclosure from your spouse. You cannot get a reasonable settlement unless your spouse clearly revealing the nature and extent of bank accounts, business interests, stocks, bonds, properties and so on.
• Start by negotiating a separation agreement. This is a private contract between you and your spouse that settles all family law issues, including custody of your children, child support, spousal support, and property issues.
• Set time lines for this negotiation-your lawyer can help with this. In most cases, you will get a reasonable settlement with your spouse sooner rather than later when you have established a time frame for the process.
• Use court as a last resort. Go to court only when your spouse persists in pursuing an unreasonable position on an important issue, such as child custody or spousal support.

Video: What is the difference between a Prenuptial Agreement and Marriage Contract?

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

Jurisdiction: Ontario (Canada)

We call it in Canada, or in Ontario, a Marriage Contract but in the U.S.A. they call it a “pre-nup” or a Prenuptial Agreement. … It’s not uncommon for people to actually do a Marriage Contract after they get married, it’s just that the bargaining power isn’t as great as it is before you get married. … People are getting married later in life. I mean, our parent’s generation and the generations before them, they got married younger. They both started off with nothing but these days people are getting married a little later in life partly because they’re going to university, they’re starting jobs, they’re starting businesses. And so by the time they actually choose to get married they may actually have some assets. And they want to protect those assets. They want to protect their income. So the Marriage Contract is sort of a document that one can say, “You know what, I love you, I’m going to marry you. But in the event that we go our separate ways, I don’t want half of what I’ve accumulated leaving the door when you leave.” So that’s why people do Marriage Contracts. Another reason is because people are getting married more than one time in life. So, many of my clients … (click here for more)

Video: What goes into a Marriage Contract?

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

Jurisdiction: Ontario (Canada)

[Host: What’s usually in a [Marriage] Contract, by the way Steve? Is it all material? Is it an agreement about material assets, pension plans, retirement savings? Is that is what is included in a Marriage Contract?] It boils down to two things. It boils down to protecting your income and protecting your assets. And so your income whatever it is today, and your assets whatever it is today, is going to be different in five or ten or twenty years. So it’s very hard to actually say I want to protect something that I don’t know that I may or may not have in fifteen or twenty years. … Really, what a Marriage Contract does it tries to protect the person’s liability or future liability to their spouse in the event of separation. And the two areas of liability are what will I have to pay them to live each month, it’s called support or alimony, and the other one is how much of my property do I have to part with when we split up. So those are the two things that people seek to protect in a Marriage Contract.

Video: Do I have to share my pension when I divorce?

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

Jurisdiction: Ontario (Canada)

A pension, a lot of people don’t see it as this but, a pension is just another asset. Much like a G.I.C. or an R.R.S.P. or a car or a boat, it’s an asset. And the law in Ontario [Canada] says whatever your asset is, including a pension, whatever the growth or the increase in value is from the date of marriage to the date of separation is to be shared. Not split at the source, although that could happen, but to be shared. So when somebody gets married their pension was worth $10,000 and when they split up it’s worth $25,000, the growth is [$15,000]. So the person with the pension owes their ex-spouse, their ex-wife, half of the growth. So, in my example — $10,000 to $25,000, it grew by $15,000 — $7,500, whatever the growth is is what is paid to … (click here for more)

Video: How can I see my child if she and her mother live in another city?

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

Jurisdiction: Ontario (Canada)

I had a case of the summer where it was a child that had two parents, one lived in Toronto and the other one lived in Owen Sound. And they hired a mediator/pyschologist who came up with a very creative plan to allow the child to spend a lot of time with both parents. And that involved the one parent coming to Toronto one weekend, the other parent going to Owen Sound one weekend. It involved elongated weekends, you know from Thursday to Sunday, or from Friday to Tuesday. And it was a fantastic plan that allowed this child to have a really good amount of time with both parents. And these are the sort of things that even you and I may not be able to come up with but people who are specialists in the field who are child-focused come up with these sort of plans that work well. So … (click here for more)

Video: What is the role of your family and friends when going through a divorce?

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

Jurisdiction: Ontario (Canada)

In my practice, I often times invite my client to bring their family with them. Why? For a few reasons. One: I want the family to hear my advice. I don’t want it to get back to the family through “broken telephone”. But I also recognize that the family is very very influential in my client’s life. And so, if the family understands the appropriate course of action, if they know, if they hear it from someone like myself who is an impartial adivsor telling the client what they ought to do or ought not do, and the family hears it or the close friends, then there’s a very good chance that the same advice will resonate. Regrettably, what often times does happen is people split up and they confide in friends or family and the friend or family becomes a cheerleader and they fan the fuel. And what ends up happening is … (click here for more)

Video: How do you introduce a Marriage Contract to your fiancée?

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

Jurisdiction: Ontario (Canada)

[Host: It’s got to be a difficult discussion to have, isn’t it? I mean saying to someone, “You know, listen, I got to be honest with you. You know, we’re going to get married and …” Do you have some suggestions as a family lawyer about how we could handle something like that?] You know, it’s just an uncomfortable topic. It is, and so there’s not many ways you can turn an uncomfortable topic into something less than that. But for those people who are motivated to do it, we give them some tips or hints on how to approach it. Certainly not a week or a day before the wedding. A long time earlier and it’s not always a bad thing to make somebody else the ‘bad guy’. So for exmaple, if the parents have property and the son or the daughter’s name is on title for the property. And that person gets married, they could say, “You know, my parents just don’t want our property having to be cut up and …” … (click here for more)