Calgary Retroactive Child Support Family Lawyers help ensure a Calgary child doesn’t suffer financially from relationship breakdown or divorce. Our Calgary Retroactive Child Support Family Lawyers recommend the best practice is to correct child support each year and to mandate an annual review and exchange of disclosure in any agreement or court order. Calgary Retroactive Child Support Family Lawyers warn that BOTH the receiving spouse and the paying spouse have a duty to ensure proper support is paid for their children. Delay in seeking an increase, or a decrease, increases the legal costs and adds pressure on the parents as well as their children. Our Calgary Retroactive Child Support Family Lawyers can help keep costs down with prompt negotiated corrections or court applications before things get out of hand. Meet with us now to get things properly resolved.
Calgary Retroactive Child Support Family Lawyers 403-444-5503
Section 22(1) of the Alberta Child Support Guidelines outlines the continuing obligation to provide income information. Our Calgary Retroactive Child Support Family Lawyers emphasize that this provision allows a recipient to request annual financial disclosure of tax returns and other documents, for the most recent three taxation years, for as long as the child is a child of the marriage.
Calgary Retroactive Child Support Family Lawyers Warn Delay can Make Things Worse
What happens when a recipient parent can’t afford to chase after a paying parent who refuses to pay promptly?
- Delay and any reason for it,
- hardship to the child,
- blameworthy conduct by the paying spouse in hiding income increases, and
- the financial prejudice and effect of a retroactive child support award on the paying spouse
are all looked at by a court.
A three year limit is often applied but there is no reason the retroactive award cannot go back in time all the way for an under or overpayment. cancelling arrears is more difficult than increasing support that was not properly paid. If your income declines don’t procrastinate call our Calgary Retroactive Child Support Family Lawyers immediately.
Lorne N. macLean, QC founder of our Calgary Retroactive Child Support Family Lawyers noted the recent Appeal decision in the Howard v Cox, 2017 ABCA 111 (CanLII) :
6 In 2004, after the child was born, the appellant paid child support for four months and then quit. When the appellant quit making child support payments in 2004, the respondent took active steps to seek child support. She retained a lawyer to assist her. The appellant was also represented by counsel. Through his lawyer, the appellant indicated that he was prepared to pay child support. Offers were made by the appellant’s lawyer in the spring of 2005 but when no agreement was reached, neither party applied to the court to have the amount of child support set. The respondent says that by September of 2005 she had run out of money to pay her lawyer. The appellant says, having heard nothing from the respondent or her lawyer, his lawyer told him that she was closing her file due to the lack of action.
7 And so for the next 10 years the appellant paid no child support and the respondent did not apply for any. The respondent says she lost track of the appellant and was focused on raising the child. However, in 2015, when the respondent heard that the appellant had a good job with a major engineering and construction company, she retained a lawyer and applied for and obtained an order requiring the appellant to pay child support, including an order that he pay three years’ of retroactive child support.
8 The appellant now appeals the retroactive provisions of that child support order on the basis that the respondent’s delay of more than 10 years in bringing an application for child support was unreasonable, thereby disqualifying her from obtaining retroactive child support. The appellant argues that the chambers judge erred in not finding that the respondent failed to meet her responsibility as the recipient parent to seek child support sooner. The appellant also argues that the chambers judge erred in : his failure to pay child support over the years as “blameworthy conduct”.
9 We reject all these arguments. The Supreme Court in Hickey v Hickey, 1999 CanLII 691 (SCC), [1999] 2 SCR 518, 172 DLR (4th) 577 directs that considerable deference must be given trial judges who make support orders. The first and foremost reason for this deference is that the trial judge, having heard the parties directly, is in the best position to determine what is required by way of support. However, the Supreme Court also indicated that another strong reason for deference is to discourage parties from incurring costs which take away from the parties’ ability to provide required support. Only if there is a material error or serious misapprehension of the evidence or the law may an appellate court vary or rescind a child support order.
10 We find none of those here. While the chambers judge’s finding of blameworthy conduct was fully supported by the appellant’s complete abdication of his child support obligations, in the end, the chambers judge did not rely on the blameworthy conduct in making his three-year retroactive award. Relying on the Supreme Court’s decision in DBS v SRG; LJW v TAR; Henry v Henry; Hiemstra v. Hiemstra, 2006 SCC 37 (CanLII), [2006] 2 SCR 231 [DBS], which clearly holds that blameworthy conduct by the payor can move the presumptive date of retroactivity back to the date when the recipient parent gave notice of the requirement for child support, in this case the spring of 2005 or earlier, the chambers judge chose only to make the child support order retroactive to 2013. Furthermore, as this court stated in Goulding v Keck, 2014 ABCA 138 (CanLII) at para 48, 373 DLR (4th) 673, blameworthy conduct, while it may justify a retroactive child support order, is not a precondition to a retroactive order.
11 The chambers judge was alive to the issue of the respondent’s delay in bringing a child support application; but he found that she had a reasonable and credible excuse for not having brought the application sooner. As the Supreme Court in DBS stated at paragraph 101, a reasonable excuse may exist where the recipient parent lacked the financial or emotional means to bring an application.
12 One of the respondent’s reasons for not seeking child support earlier was the fact that she lost track of the appellant. The chambers judge accepted that reason. But the appellant argues it was inconsistent for the chambers judge to find blameworthy conduct in the appellant’s failure to locate the respondent and the child he fathered in order to discharge his child support obligations. We do not find that to be inconsistent. It was his obligation to help support the child. The respondent was doing her part. The appellant’s obligation to provide that support required him to be much more diligent in locating mother and child than the respondent in locating him. As we understand the evidence, both the appellant and the respondent lived in Edmonton throughout this period.
In summary paying and receiving spouses involved in Calgary child support disputes Blameworthy Conduct Not A Pre-Condition To Retroactive Child Support Award Explain Calgary Retroactive Child Support Family Lawyers.
