Our Calgary Family Lawyers Explain New Divorce Act in today’s blog by our Senior Calgary family lawyer, Peter Graburn. The new Divorce Act changes have borrowed heavily from terminology adopted from BC and Calgary Alberta Provincial Statutes. The whole focus on family law today is to get people to resolve matters with a minimum of acrimony and cost which is a good thing. Spending money on your children and their future is better than paying lawyers and experts if at all possible.
Calgary Family Lawyers Explain New Divorce Act 403-444-5503
PROPOSED AMENDMENTS TO THE DIVORCE ACT – Do they really change anything in Calgary Alberta?
In late May, 2018, the Trudeau government announced proposed amendments to the federal Divorce Act, the first major update of the Act in over 20 years. Bill C- 78, an Act to amend the Divorce Act, is designed to clarify and strengthen certain terms and concepts used in divorce proceedings in Canada to bring them into more mainstream language and usage. But do the proposed changes really make any significant changes to the way married couples unravel their marital partnership in Alberta? Not really.
Hannah M. DeJong (Associate Lawyer at MacLean Law’s Vancouver office) summarizes the proposed changes to the Divorce Act contained in Bill C-78 as falling into the following 6 major categories:
►Changes in terminology – the Divorce Act currently contains terms that many view as both competitive and conflictual. The proposed changes would replace the adversarial terms “custody” and “access” in regard to the sharing of parental responsibilities to the more neutral, child-focused term of “parenting”;
►Determining “Best interests of the Child” – As indicated in my previous articles, “best interests of the child” is the bottom-line test for any decision regarding children. The proposed changes establish a non-exhaustive list of criteria that a Court must consider in determining what is in the best interests of the child, and clarifies there would be no presumption that ‘shared parenting’ or ‘shared decision-making’ is automatically “in the best interest of the child”;
►Promoting Alternative Dispute Resolution – Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) is the current trend in family law – it saves time and money (and often the emotional cost of family disputes). Even many Judges agree family matters should not be decided by the Courts (unless absolutely necessary, ie. high-conflict cases). The proposed changes create duties for parties and their legal advisers to encourage the use of family dispute resolution processes (ie. negotiation, collaborative law, mediation, arbitration, etc.) rather than the more adversarial Court process;
►Address Family Violence – Family violence tears families apart and is unacceptable. The proposed changes introduce measures to assist the courts in addressing family violence by introducing a definition for family violence and requiring the Court to take any recent history of family violence (and other factors) into account in deciding parenting arrangements;
►Codify Mobility Applications – As people’s families and jobs become more spread out, mobility applications become more common, and often more contentious. There are also very few guidelines (aside from the 1996 Supreme Court of Canada case of Gordon vs. Goertz) to determine whether a mobility application would be successful. The proposed changes establish a framework for the relocation of a child, including the requirement for a parent to give the other parent notice of a planned relocation, and clarifying who has the burden to prove whether the move is / is not in the child’s best interests, etc.;
►Simplify Related Processes – Finally, the proposed changes simplify certain family law court processes, including enhanced financial disclosure powers to encourage better enforcement of family (child) support obligations.
Calgary Family Lawyers Explain New Divorce Act – Get Personalized Advice on Resolving Your Family Matter
Calgary Family Lawyers Explain New Divorce Act – what is the takeaway? So, would the proposed changes to the Divorce Act recently made by the federal government change much in the every-day family law process in Alberta? Not really. Many of the proposed changes (ie. changed terminology, definition of “best interests of the child”, etc.) are already in use in both Alberta and British Columbia. However, some changes (ie. clarifying mobility applications, encouraging the use of parenting plans, etc.) would help in adding some certainty to the area of family law. Remember, these are only proposed amendments to the Divorce Act – they have not yet been passed into law.
Calgary Family Law lawyers can assist their clients understand the ever-changing laws that affect the resolution of their family law matters, and assist them to make decisions that affect their (and their children’s) lives now and into the future.
