How is Family Law Equalization Calculated in Ontario?

In Ontario, one of the most complex parts of a divorce involves the division of property. Equalization payments are designed to allow spouses to keep their personal property and split joint financial assets evenly. While this may seem like a simple fifty-fifty proposition, family law equalization calculations, when not performed properly and legally, can leave one spouse at a significant...

Start Your New Life with a Post-Divorce Bucket List

There’s no arguing that the majority of divorces are unhappy events. Rare is the divorce that’s completely mutual and pain-free. Due to the traumatic nature of the dissolution of marriage, it’s always advisable to try to salvage your relationship if you’re not experiencing emotional or physical abuse from your partner. However, when divorce is the option that makes the most sense, it’s...

The Difference Between Canadian and US Divorce Laws

Divorce law in Canada and the United States is similar in terms of the dissolution of marriage and the division of wealth and child custody. How the law is enforced, however, differs greatly. Canada has a federal divorce act while the United States leaves the specifics up to each individual state. Canadian provinces can make only small changes in family law to suit jurisdictional...

Are You Avoiding Divorce Because Your Family “Stays Together?”

Staying together for the sake of the kids is a noble idea. Divorce is never a pleasant situation, and your kids will have to deal with the dissolution of your marriage in spite of your best efforts to shield them from it. Depending on the circumstances, it may indeed be a good idea to remain married. Unfortunately, if the relationship can’t be healed, then staying together for the kids could...

Do Your Spouse’s Parent Object to a Prenup?

Prenups can be difficult to negotiate. When you’re about to get married, you want to be thinking about all the good times you’ll have, not the potential for the relationship to end. But a prenup isn’t a forecast of failure; rather, it is a sensible precaution that sets out how assets and support will be handled in the event that things don’t go as planned. Of course,...

What You Need to Know Before Using an Online Spousal Support Calculator

Many people turn to online spousal support calculators, in hopes of making sense of their situation. The anxiety of not knowing what support they can hope for will lead them to try anything. But you can’t trust an online calculator to give you the whole picture. These tools are not complex enough to be able to give you a good sense of what to expect, especially as your case may not fit...

Do You Need a Lawyer to Get Child Support?

While you don’t need to hire a lawyer for child support, having an expert ally when facing this difficult legal scenario ensures that you cover all the angles. Ontario’s family law system considers both parents responsible for raising and supporting a child. Often, disputes arise because of tension between partners, although there are unfortunate cases in which a parent simply doesn’t want to...

Will Divorce Make Your Ex a Better Parent

Parenting after divorce can be one of the most difficult aspects of splitting from your spouse. Depending on the circumstances, co-parenting may force you to deal with complications that place obstacles between children and parents. In other cases, when couples divorce, one or both partners may end up becoming better parents because they no longer pour energy into fighting to save the...

Can a Divorce Lawyer Make My Ex Pay Child Support?

Whether the answer to this question is “yes” or “no” depends on the role you expect your divorce lawyer to take in the pursuit of child support. While a divorce lawyer cannot be the one to directly make your ex pay child support, they can be instrumental in establishing required payments. What can a divorce lawyer do to secure child support? Your divorce lawyer can...

Lessons to Learn From Other People’s Divorce

Whether they’re good or bad, our experiences can teach us a lot. Luckily, we don’t have to have already gone through something to learn from it. Other people’s advice and discoveries are often available to us, even more so now that we have the internet and can reach out to each other across the globe. Here are some lessons that several divorced people say they learned from...