Instructors, mentors and ADR professionals play a crucial role in inspiring, supporting and imparting knowledge to those new to the field. Their role is essential in influencing a student’s experience.  My year in the ADR program at Humber College offered me much more than I had initially anticipated. It was a new experience for me to be in a program with helpful mentors who encouraged networking and attending workshops, classmates that worked together and instructors who knew you on a first name basis. It was stimulating to be in a class where everyone came from diverse educational backgrounds – students with…

It is not uncommon for family businesses and their managing families to be in conflict.  There are the “everyday” conflicts of running the operating company.  These can include debates on machinery acquisitions, pricing policies, supplier relationships, customer relationships, etc.  For some instinctive survivalist reasoning, these conflicts general get solved one way or another as they are purely about the business at hand.  Someone loses an argument here but may win one over there.  The expression “pick you battles” must have originated in this playing field.  They get solved! The business must continue to move forward. What about the conflicts that…

No, this post is not about local politics.  Completing the family law financial statement budget is one of the first formalities in which a family law mediator will face pushback. It’s too complicated, too confusing, too time consuming, will cause too much delay, it’s pointless if we primarily rely on gross income for child support and spousal support calculations, it’s not relevant where the only issue is property. Did I miss any? Oh, yes. Those were the negative complaints. Here are the positive complaints: We have simple finances. We agreed to keep costs down. We agreed to skip the income…

Getting your clients to complete their disclosure fully can be a real challenge for mediators. Member Matilda Kissi, a Senior Family Law Clerk met with Toronto family lawyer Lauren B. Israel, who is an expert at helping clients understand and complete this task. We asked Matilda for her advice: FDRIO: What is the part of financial disclosure that most clients struggle with the most? What tips do you have for mediators? Matilda: The hardest part is the expenses/budget section.  Most people inflate the numbers because they think it will help them and show that they need more money from their…

With the passage of Bill C-78, the federal government seems to have achieved the goal that all governments strive for – pleasing most interest groups and alienating none.  Governments can often be reluctant to wade into family law, because it is an area of law that is perceived, rightly or wrongly, to be a political ticking bomb, because some of the most vocal family law stakeholders can be divided along gender lines – intimate partner violence advocates on one hand and dads’ rights advocates on the other.  These groups are vocal and engaged so federal governments from all parties have…

One of the important questions for mediators to ask as legal aid funding has been removed from mediation advice services, and as duty and advice counsel become more limited, is how will clients receive independent legal advice, both before during and after mediation (if they want to develop a separation agreement). One new option to consider is the new Family Law Limited Scope Services Project.  On their website www.FamilyLawLSS.ca, the project offers a directory of lawyers who offer limited scope services. These lawyers have had training to help them understand and navigate different types of limited scope services for family…

Family mediation has been an effective method of dispute resolution for over 40 years, but there are always new developments on the horizon.  Some of these innovations spill over from other well-developed mediation practices, others from development in our understanding of the psycho-social aspects of conflict. With the proliferation of technology, some of these developments add new processes, while others focus on the content of and approach of the mediation practice. New Processes – Distance or On-line Mediation Distance approaches have been used for many years in areas such as auto insurance dispute resolution or other areas of administrative law…

Recent changes to government funding to Legal Aid Ontario (LAO) are having a significant impact on domestic (non-child protection) family mediation. Until these changes, family mediators, who often work with unrepresented parties, were able to rely on LAO support for their clients in the following ways: LAO offered special 6 and 10 hour certificates to support mediation clients and clients negotiating separation agreements. The financial eligibility criteria for these special certificates were quite a bit higher than for standard certificates. For mediation certificates, if one party met the financial eligibility threshold the other could have income up to $50,000 and…

Since Arbitrations conducted by Parenting Coordinators (PCs) in Ontario are generally considered “Secondary Arbitration” (Family Law Act, Section 59.7), PCs deal with issues arising from an existing Separation Agreement, Arbitration Award or Court Order.  As such, PCs implement, clarify, interpret, change and/or adapt parenting arrangements as children grow and change. The matter of when and whether PCs should enforce versus clarify or change existing Orders can be controversial, and challenging for PCs and their clients. Besides conflicting over parenting issues, Parenting Coordination (PC) clients often battle with each other over procedural matters, such as whether the PC has the jurisdiction…

By Amir Levine, M.D., and Rachel S.F. Heller, M.A. Penguin Publishing Group, January 5, 2012   How would you rate this book out of five for FDRPs? Sina: At least a 4/5. There are a lot of complicated principles here and this is a very good place to start thinking about them. This is definitely a go-to for anyone who works in any dimension of family law or the practice of relationships. Raheena: I would rank it to 4 to 4.5 /5. If an FDRP reads it as a starting point, I would give it 4.5. As a sole resource,…

Another case from an experienced Ontario Court judge is interesting on the question of costs. Robert Spence, J. finds that the often-cited case of Biant v. Sagoo, 2001 ONSC 28137, (CAN LII), has been disapproved by the Court of Appeal in the more recent case of Beaver v. Hill 2018 ONCA 840 (CAN LII). He is critical of counsel for not bringing this to the Court’s attention. In Biant v. Sagoo, the Court held that costs should generally approach full recovery as long as the successful party has behaved reasonably, and the costs claimed are proportional to the issue(s). In…

Assuming you have properly screened for intimate-partner violence and have established sufficient safeguards either to mediate or arbitrate, then Justice M. Linhares de Sousa’s decision in Moncrieff v. Floresco-Dakin 2019 ONSC 2740  (CANLII)  is instructive on the kind of information you might require when deciding to loosen restrictions on supervised access. In this case, a father, who had committed domestic violence on his partner, wanted unsupervised access to his four-year-old son who was autistic. To support his position, he filed a somewhat dated letter from his former doctor indicating that his mental health prognosis was good, but he needed to…

As mediators and arbitrators, we are frequently called upon to help parties resolve child support issues; in fact, along with parenting, this is likely the “bread and butter” of our work. A recent case, a decision by an experienced family judge, Paulseth, J., from the Ontario Court of Justice, [Smith v. Max 2019 ONCJ 241], released on April 15, 2019, covers the basic issues in a clear, concise manner which provides a good model to follow. After a lengthy period of litigation, the father asked the Court, by way of a motion to change, to reduce child support because his…