Vancouver Retroactive Child Support Delay Is Often Fatal Financially 604-602-9000
As a Vancouver Retroactive Child Support family lawyer for nearly 40+ years I have handled hundreds of Vancouver retroactive child support cases. Sadly, sometimes one parent doesn’t diligently pursue child support for years from fear, procrastination, indecision, or the lack of funds to pay a lawyer. All too often the end result can be that a child suffers a standard of living far less than they are entitled to. It’s hard to believe the non-child support paying parent stays awake at night worrying about their failure to make their proper child support payment. Even when a retroactive award is made the paying parent usually doesn’t pay interest and the cost of living means the retroactive award is still less than it would have been if paid at the time is was due.
Note to custodial or primary residential parents – do not delay in seeking child support or your child will often get less than what they are entitled to.
Meet with our Vancouver Retroactive Child Support lawyers immediately upon separation to find out your rights and obligations. Your child deserves what’s fair. You want to get proper support at the time it’s owed so you never have to seek Vancouver retroactive child support. Paying parents whose incomes decline need to vary support downward or they may fail to get a reduction for a Vancouver retroactive child support claim.
Sad Result For Child Due To Mother’s Delay Means Child Does Without Proper Support
So what happens when a child gets old enough to urge their parent to do something to ensure proper child support is finally paid and for the entire period where they were shortchanged or received nothing at all? Sometimes a retroactive award is made a long way back. Sometimes no retroactive award is made at all because a parent failed to ensure their child got proper support. In the end the loser is the child because the they do not receive what they should have.
Retroactive Award to Date of Application Instead of Back to Child’s Birth 18 years Ago Upheld
Such an unfortunate Vancouver retroactive child support result occurred in the case of Brown v. Kucher, from our BC Court of Appeal released this week. A mother took no action to get any child support at all until her teenage daughter finally got her mother to take action on her behalf to get some child support 18 years later. Initially, the Provincial Court judge ordered retroactive support back 18 years to the birth of the child. However, this order was appeal and set aside and when the mother appealed to reinstate the 18 years of retroactive support she and her daughter lost. The official court website summary states the reasoning:
The Supreme Court judge had not erred in allowing an appeal from the Provincial Court judge’s order of retroactive child support back 19 years to the child’s date of birth and instead ordering it to commence only in 2013 which was the first date the mother gave notice of a claim for child support.
Vancouver Retroactive Child Support Decision
When you read the reasons you will note the court felt the father had not engaged in the worst misconduct a non paying spouse could perpetrate. Instead the mother’s delay on behalf of her daughter was financially fatal to her claim for her daughter’s child support and the support only started on the date the mother finally gave notice she wanted support from the father for their child.
[1] NEWBURY, J.A.: Ms. Kucher appeals an order of Madam Justice Fisher which in turn allowed an appeal by Mr. Brown from an order of a Provincial Court judge. The Provincial Court order awarded retroactive child support to Ms. Kucher in the amount of $70,320, being the sum of child support that the trial judge calculated would have been payable between 1995 and 2013 under the Child Support Guidelines in respect of the parties’ child ,“C.K.” C.K. was almost 19 years old at the time of trial and is now almost 21.
[29] I am unable to agree that the chambers judge failed to apply the appropriate standards of review. I find it necessary to refer only to one of the trial judge’s treatment of one of the four DBS factors – the payor parent’s misconduct – to decide this appeal. However, I shall also refer to the first factor – Ms. Kucher’s reason for the 18-year delay – for the sake of completeness. It was surely an error in logic – and I believe, in law – for the trial judge to move from a finding that Ms. Kucher was “traumatized” in 1995 by Mr. Brown’s walking out, to the conclusion that she remained unable, because of her emotional fragility, to seek financial assistance for the following 18 years. The trial judge made no finding that Ms. Kucher was traumatized for the entire period and indeed such a finding would almost certainly have required psychiatric evidence from an expert of some kind, especially in the face of evidence that Ms. Kucher was, as Mr. LaCroix suggested, a fairly “competent” person who had “sought and obtained” support for her other children from their fathers, renovated a house in Victoria, and represented herself in the courts below.
[30] The fact that in 2013, Ms. Kucher readily acceded to her daughter’s suggestion to track Mr. Brown down indicates that at some point, her emotional fragility had waned and she was strong enough to initiate a application. But whether this might have been the case when C.K. was 2 years old, 5 years old or 15 years old was not addressed by the trial judge. With respect, it needed to be addressed if a delay of 18 years was to be excused. Whether one characterizes the trial judge’s reasoning as disclosing a failure to consider a relevant factor or an error in principle, it seems to me the chambers judge could legitimately interfere with the trial judge’s conclusion that a reasonable excuse had been shown.
[31] It is because of the trial judge’s characterization of Mr. Brown’s conduct, however, that this appeal must in my view fail. The Court’s ruling that Mr. Brown’s ‘doing nothing’ for 18 years amounted to misconduct “at the high end of the scale of blameworthiness” constitutes in my respectful opinion a misapprehension of the relevant law. The authorities before the Court illustrated various other types ofactive misconduct that rank far worse on the scale of blameworthiness – active deception, hiding from the payee parent, creating false records of income – these are all far worse than Mr. Brown’s conduct; yet Mr. Horn was not able to refer us to any case that sanctioned an award that went back anywhere near 19 years, even where the conduct was “active”. (The longest period was 7 years inSwiderski v. Dussault, 2009 BCCA 461, a case that is obviously distinguishable from this; see also DBS itself at para. 141.) In my opinion, it was erroneous in law for the trial judge to rank Mr. Brown’s ‘waiting in the weeds’ as more egregious than such active misconduct. Unfortunately, this error tainted the balance of the trial judge’s consideration of Mr. Brown’s financial circumstances and the final question of the appropriate date for the retroactive award. An award retroactive to a child’s birthdate might conceivably be appropriate where the payor’s conduct is at the high end of moral blameworthiness and where the child is considerably younger, but this was not such a case.
[32] In the result, the chambers judge did not err in setting aside the trial judge’s order and making the order she did.
Vancouver Retroactive Child Support
In the end result the father dodged a bullet because the mother failed to be responsible to advance her daughter’s claim. Contact our Vancouver Retroactive Child Support lawyers today or risk facing the same disturbing result. Contact us toll free across BC at 1-877-602-9900.
