Our highly rated BC and Calgary family lawyers cannot emphasize enough the duty of full disclosure in BC child and spousal support and family property division cases. All to often parties refuse to provide proof of their real income including receipt of unreported cash payments, personal benefits from companies, monies kept in a company so a personal tax return doesn’t accurately reflect what they really could access as income, refusals to take job opportunities, diversion of monies or property into 3rd parties names or accounts. cash hidden in suitcases or the attic, money turned into travellers cheques, secret overseas or US accounts, rash spending on gambling or other unsavoury practices and more. Contact any of our 4 offices across BC now.
It is critical you have a lawyer on your side who knows where to look and how to find these hidden sources of income and assets. Mr. MacLean loves his cross examination of a husband who said he gambled away $100,000 of family money which had been removed from a bank account. The husband couldn’t name a favourite dealer and he admitted he routinely lost more than $10,000 an evening at the Casino. After MacLean had the husband committed to this fact of losses in excess of $10,000 on routine occasions, he called the Casino owner who explained they are required at law to take picture ID of each $10,000 loser for money laundering purposes. Guess What? They had never seen this man and had never taken a picture of his ID. Suddenly the husband who had been caught perjuring himself remembered the money was in a suitcase in behind the wall of his home!
The new Family Law Act takes effect on March 18, 2013 and here is the government summary of the new disclosure rules:
Section 5 requires full and truthful disclosure early in the process to promote early settlement by ensuring that the parties have all the information required for fair and sound decision-making. Information gaps can fuel or prolong conflict and can affect the fairness of agreements.• It will apply to all persons involved in a family law dispute, including during the period before a court proceeding is commenced when the parties try to resolve their dispute through an agreement.
The Family Law Act will come fully into force on March 18, 2013.
Until then, the Family Relations Act governs family law cases in B.C.
This document was developed by the Ministry of Justice to support the transition to the Family Law Act. It is not legal advice and should not be relied upon for those purposes.
Updated: Aug 8, 2012
- Other sections of the act also deal with disclosure and work in conjunction with this provision.
- Agreements made without appropriate disclosure may be set aside if challenged in the future: see for example, section 93 [Setting aside agreements respecting property], section 164 [Setting aside agreements respecting spousal support].
- Where an agreement is set aside based on non-disclosure, the court may also penalize the person if they entered into an agreement knowing they were not disclosing significant property under section 214 [Orders respecting agreements].
- If a court proceeding is started, the court has the power to order disclosure under section 212 and may enforce these orders under section 213. These sections give both courts a range of tools to deal with situations where disclosure is delayed, incomplete or false.
Call us if you have questions concerning making full disclosure or dealing with and obtaining relief from a lack of honest disclosure.
