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…

It is generally thought that a Voice of the Child Report should only be ordered for older children. In ascertaining the views and wishes of a child, the older the child is, the more weight is given to this evidence. In Canepa v. Canepa, 2018 ONSC 5154,  Justice F. Kiteley ordered a Voice of the Child Report for two children, one aged 8 years, and the other five months shy of 7 years. Kiteley, J. found that she had jurisdiction to do so under the Family Law Rules (Rule 20.1 (3)) which gives the Court authority to appoint an expert…

The case of Lobranova v. Grynyshyn 2019 ONSC 3064 may well be authority for the principle that you cannot have your cake and eat it at the same time. This recent decision by Justice F. Myers prevents a party from abandoning arbitration for a court process after arbitration has been the process chosen by the parties. This is not a family law case, but family law lawyers, mediators and arbitrators will be all too familiar with its factual scenario. One side sues the other over the proceeds of the sale of a property of about 2.4 million dollars. During the…