Top 5 Vancouver Dirty Divorce Tricks are explained today by Lorne N MacLean, QC. MacLean is the founder of MacLean Law, which was voted top Vancouver family law firm for the last 5 out of 6 years by Top Choice Awards*. Over the 36 years of my high conflict and high net worth family law practice, I’ve seen several “dirty divorce tricks”. I’ve also learned many no-nonsense strategies to hold spouses accountable when they commit these forms of litigation malfeasance. My firm has several offices across BC and in Calgary. If my tips for dealing with divorce dirty tricks help you, consider meeting with one of our family lawyers promptly.
Learn How To Defeat Top 5 Vancouver Dirty Divorce Tricks 1 877 602 9900
As the winning counsel of one of the top 3 highest Canadian interim spousal and child support awards followed up by an even higher record Canadian support award at trial, I have seen common “dirty divorce tricks” regularly. I’ve had misbehaving spouses fined and even jailed.
I’ve also raided company offices in Anton Pillar raids and had opposing spouse’s finances forensically audited at their own expense and successfully found millions of missing assets and income. Finally, I’ve frozen assets around the world using Mareva injunctions and obtained special costs including a record $1,500,000 special costs judgment being a 100% indemnity for misconduct by spouses who hid assets and committed perjury. Today I’ll share my top 5 Vancouver dirty divorce tricks with you along with winning strategies to help defeat these tricks.
Top 5 Vancouver Dirty Divorce Tricks Explained 1 877 602 9900
#1 Strategically “Conflicting out” all the top Vancouver divorce lawyers
By “conflicting out” certain well-respected family attorneys, your spouse can make it difficult or impossible for you to hire the Vancouver family lawyer you want to use based on their reputation and skill set as a top Vancouver divorce lawyer. In this dirty divorce trick, the spouse meets with several top Vancouver divorce lawyers sharing details of your spousal relationship but with no intention of hiring that lawyer. Unfortunately, for you, after they meet with this lawyer that top Vancouver family lawyer will be prohibited from acting for you. It’s difficult to prove that the meetings were in bad faith and not a situation where the spouse was interviewing Vancouver divorce lawyers to find the most qualified one they would be most comfortable with. If the tactic is exposed and the information provided would have had to have been disclosed in any event a judge may refuse to declare there is a conflict.
How To Defeat This Behaviour
The common-sense lesson here is straight forward. Don’t procrastinate when hiring a top Vancouver divorce lawyer. If you snooze, you’ll lose.
#2 Stalling and delaying.
Often the party with the greater financial resources will seek to postpone or delay the setting of Court dates for financial relief. Alternatively, a spouse with the children most of the time may delay a parent who has limited time with their children from obtaining court orders to increase parenting time. Conversely, some spouses will set court hearings and/or file excessive applications and requests for document disclosure, in an attempt to exhaust the other spouse financially and mentally.
How To Defeat This Behaviour
Hire a lawyer with a strategic plan to move the matter forward promptly. Hire a top Vancouver divorce lawyer who takes action after writing a letter to try to resolve matters by agreement that is not reasonably responded to. Don’t get into a letter-writing campaign when it becomes clear stalling tactics are in play. Setting court dates to ensure you obtain proper financial relief and/or child parenting-related relief sets an endpoint for negotiations to be completed or a judgment will be made by the Court. Do not procrastinate or delay in taking action against the stalling spouse and make sure the court is made aware of these tactics.
# 3 Letting Your Spouse Exert Pressure to proceed too quickly and without disclosure.
It is very common for one spouse to have all the knowledge concerning complex finances related to companies, trusts, and investments. Beware of the spouse who very early in the process sends over a settlement offer for the other spouse to review that provides no context enabling it to be fairly assessed. Make sure your lawyer has the experience and background to ferret out the key missing information.
How To Defeat This Behaviour
No divorce settlement offer can be assessed for reasonableness without full disclosure under oath coupled with expert valuation, tax advice, and guideline income opinion evidence. Hiring a top Vancouver divorce lawyer who understands corporate finances and high net worth issues makes sense when the stakes are high. Even though a family separation is stressful, things only become worse if you rush to sign an unfair settlement. Hiring a top divorce lawyer who knows how to help you remain calm and focused on an appropriate outcome and who can also help you work toward a fair a sustainable post-separation outcome just makes good sense.
# 4 Denying financial support and access to family accounts.
Many spouses let the other spouse handle the family finances. During a divorce, a husband, for example, might use his wife’s lack of financial knowledge to his advantage. Having a spouse sign documents, they do not understand the importance of, happens regularly near the end of a relationship. Cutting off of credit cards, lines of credit, utilities, refusing to pay rental costs or monthly mortgages, moving funds out of family accounts, etc. ramp up stress on the dependent spouse and children. Denying funds to enable the financially weaker spouse to obtain top Vancouver divorce counsel is also common.
How To Defeat This Behaviour
These financially controlling and mentally abusive behaviours are family violence in BC and courts will not tolerate this misconduct. I recommend you proceed promptly to court to obtain an interim advance of funds to enable you to level the playing field pending final determination of financial and child parenting issues. You should also seek to obtain orders freezing financial accounts except to enable parties to pay living expenses and court-ordered support. I recommend you consider promptly obtaining the following types of Orders:
- restraining orders on the disposition of family property or increasing of family debt;
- worldwide freezing and disclosure Mareva Injunctions;
- restraining orders to divide profits from a family business;
- restraining orders preventing the bankruptcy of a spouse;
- interim advances of up to several hundreds of thousands of dollars;
- personal protection orders including lifetime protection orders; and
- interim spousal and child support including retroactive support
# 5 Hiding of Family Property and Income
This type of litigation misconduct has resulted in several blog posts by us. Non-disclosure is called the cancer of family law litigation. Lorne MacLean, QC set the standard for sanctioning this type of misconduct in the Supreme Court of Canada decision in Young v Young Refusal to obey court orders and pay support is also something judges are increasingly fed up with. Read Sophie Bartholomew’s blog on hidden family property. Jonathan Wai also wrote a great blog on how the courts take a dim view of people who hide assets and what the test for drawing an adverse inference that family assets are truly missing is.
Top 5 Vancouver Dirty Divorce Tricks – Meet Us Now To Protect Yourself 1 877 602 9900
So there are my Top 5 Vancouver Dirty Divorce Tricks and how to fight back against them. These tips will help you and your children obtain justice. If you have a question concerning any of these Vancouver Top 5 Dirty Divorce Tricks call me at 1 877 602 9900.
