Podcast: Child Support and Spousal Support Guidelines in Ontario
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Subscribe: RSS
In this transcribed interview with Dale Goldhawk of Zoomer Radio AM740 in Toronto, family and divorce lawyer Lorne Fine of Fine & Associates Professional Corporation offers advice on child support and spousal support. Read the interview below, or listen to the podcast at the bottom of the page.
Goldhawk Fights Back Podcast: Recorded June 25, 2013
Dale: Okay, we’re back here on Zoomer Radio, the time is almost 12:19,
Lorne Fine has joined us in the studio, just hauled in all his law books
and all his files and everything. You didn’t have to wear the gown, though,
you know what I’m saying? Lorne, it’s great to see you.
Lorne: I like to get dressed up. Thank you for having me.
Dale: Today we’re going to start out talking a bit about one of the more
contentious issues, I think, and I’m sure you would agree, in a marriage
breakup, and that’s the kids, and issues involving child support. And you
were going to answer the question, well, can that child support amount, and
maybe some of the conditions, how can that be adjusted? Can it be, I guess,
the first question is, can it be adjusted once set?
Lorne: The first principle is that people have to realize that child
support – is that better?
Dale: No, you’ve got to pull it up. There you go. You’re a tall guy, you
see.
Lorne: I’m so tall, that’s the problem.
Dale: McLean isn’t that tall, so we had to lower it for him. McLean,
there’s nothing wrong with that, okay, if you’re listening? Some of us
aren’t as tall as Lorne Fine, how tall are you?
Lorne: Six five.
Dale: Six five.
Lorne: That’s not normal.
Dale: No wonder. Way above the norm.
Lorne: The biggest lawyer in town, let’s say. So the first principle
is that child support belongs to the child. You’re paying support for the
child. Some people say ‘I’m paying child support but the mother is spending
it on dresses’ or whatever she’s…You can’t dictate to the mother how
she’s going to…
Dale: Because she has custody.
Lorne: Assuming she has custody of the kids.
Dale: Assuming she has custody of the kids, right? Otherwise you’re paying
directly, because you have custody of the kids, you being the man and the
them being the woman, although it’s often the other way around.
Lorne: Right. Though you can’t dictate to the support recipient, let’s
call the mother the support recipient, maybe the father too, you can’t
dictate to the support recipient how he or she is to use the money. So
that’s the first thing.
Dale: And that’s a huge issue, is it not? I bet you hear that all the time.
Lorne: I hear it all the time. There’s nothing you can do. There’s a
presumption that when you pay support, the support recipient’s going to use
it for the benefit of the children. So that’s the first principle. The
second principle is that anything with regards to the kids can always be
changed by the court. Nothing’s written in stone. So that has to do with
custody access, child support, okay. So to vary support is two issues. One
is ongoing support, you want to vary your support on an ongoing basis, but
there’s also, you may want to vary support retroactively. So let’s say
arrears mount, child support arrears are mounting, you want to change the
amount of the arrears. So there’s ongoing support you can change, but
there’s also retroactive support you can change, it’s different.
Dale: Well, retroactive meaning, I guess, basically up.
Lorne: No, retroactive is in the past.
Dale: No, I know that, but if you’re going back retroactively, you’re
increasing the payment, I think.
Lorne: It could go down. Let’s say the payor says, there’s a support
order and the payor was to pay $1000 a month, based on his income of
$60,000 a year, and he loses his job, and doesn’t do anything about it.
Time goes on, arrears mount, next thing you know he owes $25,000 in
support. And the Family Responsibility Office starts going after him, and
they’re going to suspend his license, and he has to go and say why the
quantity of arrears should change. What happened, why it should be reduced.
Dale: It’s a legitimate argument, is it, for the person paying the support,
man or woman, to say, ‘I lost my job and I don’t have that income, ergo I
cannot pay’?
Lorne: Well, that’s the first step, that’s not necessarily the end of
the story.
Dale: No, because you know where I’m going with this, I know of a number of
situations I’ve heard of where either the employment has gone underground,
if you know what I mean, or they simply don’t want to work, and they’re
folding their arms and saying, ‘That’s it, I’m not paying.’
Lorne: That’s when there’s problems. I’ve had people say to me, ‘I’ll
lose my job, I’ll quit my job.’ You can’t quit your job. If you quit your
job, a judge is going to say, ‘You quit your job, you intentionally reduced
your income, you can still earn the same amount of money, you should be
still paying the same amount of support,’ and the judge will order you to
continue paying the support.
Dale: Even though you don’t have a job, then it’s up to you find the money.
Lorne: Find the money, get another job. So no one’s going to believe
you, you can’t be a brain surgeon and then decide, ‘I want to be a waiter.’
Dale: Although a brain surgeon might make a pretty decent waiter. the other
way around wouldn’t work.
Lorne: No, the other way around is fine, if you want to be a brain
surgeon and make much more money, no one’s going to complain. But if you’re
going to make a lot of money, and then say, ‘You know what, I want to do
something that’s going to make less money’, the court’s going to say, ‘Wait
a minute, that’s going to affect your child, and you can’t do that.’
Dale: Okay, so all this adjustment going on here has to be done before a
court, this isn’t something. could you also do that in dealing with the so-
called other side, just in an agreement?
Lorne: Absolutely.
Dale: You can, you don’t have to go to court.
Lorne: You don’t have to go to court, absolutely. So the child support
guidelines says that every year you’re supposed to exchange financial
disclosure and alter your support. So if you’re making more money, you pay
more support. You’re making less money, you should pay less support. So the
guidelines provide for review on an annual basis, and if you and the
support recipient can agree, you just have an agreement. You should have
something in writing to say what your agreement is. I have many people come
to me and say, ‘Oh, well, she agreed to accept less support. I told her I
can’t pay $2,000 anymore, and she agreed to accept $1,000.’ You still have
an agreement, you still have a court order that says $2,000. Without
anything in writing, nobody knows for sure what your agreement was, unless
the support recipient agrees.
Dale: Is there a table of sorts that if you make so much money and you have
two kids, depending on their age, you have to pay so much money. Is there a
guideline? I guess is what I’m asking.
Lorne: Right.
Dale: That’s what that book is, right?
Lorne: Yeah, this is one of my many books.
Dale: Well-thumbed, may I say, with about three hundred Post-it notes
interspersed.
Lorne: And each Post-it note is significant for some reason. But yes,
there’s the child support guidelines, it sets out your income and how many
kids you have. I was going to read an example.
Dale: Give us a typical, yeah.
Lorne: I’ll give you an example, the problem is I didn’t bring my
glasses, so let’s see if I can do this without my glasses. So let’s say the
support payor is making.
Dale: Here, try mine, they might work, who knows.
Lorne: No. Here, I’m going to give it to you, I’ll show you what to
do.
Dale: I’m a mere, I’m a pedestrian.
Lorne: You can do it, I have faith in you. So someone’s making
$70,000, you go the table. you go to the table, he’s making $70,000.
Dale: Just a minute, I’ve got this huge book. $70,000, that’s in the income
revenue stage.
Lorne: Right, so go to 70.
Dale: There’s 70, 70 even. $70,000.
Lorne: And then there’s different columns for how many kids, one kid,
two kids.
Dale: Okay. Four kids, $1,500. Two kids, $1,200, two kids, $966, and one
child, $598.
Lorne: Let’s see if you’re right, I don’t know it off by heart, I’ll
see if you’re.
Dale: Well, you don’t have glasses, how can you tell if I’m right, I
already read it to you. I followed my finger across the…
Lorne: I think you’re right.
Dale: You see there?
Lorne: And. I think you’re right.
Dale: By George, I think he’s right. But that’s the guideline.
Lorne: Those are the guidelines.
Dale: But you can obviously, if you make the $70,000, you can’t vary the
guideline, because you’re making that much money, so that’s how much money
you have to.
Lorne: Well, so there’s other rules, you can vary it if there’s
certain circumstances, depending on the custodial relationship, let’s say
you have shared custody. If you have shared custody and the child’s with
you half the time, you’re going to be paying less support. There’s an undue-
hardship argument, that ‘I can’t afford to pay it’, that’s a very hard
argument.
Dale: Yeah, that would be a tough argument.
Lorne: Very hard to make.
Dale: But often you hear disputes where the payor will say something like,
‘I don’t get to see the kids, so I’m not paying.’ It gets all wrapped up in
custody.
Lorne: That’s not a good argument to use.
Dale: No, it’s not a good argument to make, but I’m sure you have
encountered situations.
Lorne: All the time. All the time.
Dale: Where your client would say, ‘I don’t get to see the kids nearly
often enough, she or he manages to restrict my access to them, so I’m not
paying.’
Lorne: Happens all the time. But that goes back to first principles,
that the support belongs to the child.
Dale: And in the eyes of the law, it’s not really linked to access to the
kids, right?
Lorne: Right.
Dale: It can be, it’s a separate.
Lorne: Totally separate. That’s true, with one exception. The
exception is, when the child is older, let’s say the child is 19, 20, the
child’s older, in university, and let’s say the child says, ‘You know what,
I don’t want to see you any more, I don’t want a relationship with you.’
And the child unilaterally severs their relationship.
Dale: With the paying parent.
Lorne: With the paying parent. Then there’s a stronger argument,
there’s movement towards that. if the adult child is saying, ‘You know,
Dad, I don’t want you in my life’, should the payor continue to pay?
Dale: Because normally the payor would continue as long as that kid was in
university.
Lorne: A dependent, right. But if the kid tells the dad to go take a
hike, then there’s an argument that.
Dale: You might be able to go to court with that and argue that point.
Lorne: It’s not a slam dunk by any stretch of the imagination, but
it’s an argument. And that goes for an adult child.
Dale: Okay. How successful, these days, is the FRO being in collecting all
that back support payment?
Lorne: Well, the FRO is a huge institution, it’s a huge bureaucracy,
so my experience is.
Dale: Why I’m asking, because I looked at it a few years ago, and the
amounts involved were absolutely staggering.
Lorne: Huge. Staggering.
Dale: In terms of the support money owed to the kids.
Lorne: There’s, I hear complaints all the time, but they do a fairly
good job in most cases. There are people who are owed a lot of money, there
are people who get away with not paying.
Dale: They leave the country, they hide their assets, whatever they do,
right.
Lorne: They hide their assets, they go underground, there’s all kinds
of things that can happen. They have a serious burden, it’s a serious
obligation to enforce the support orders. They do a fairly good job, but
some things slip through the cracks. I always tell my clients, follow up
with FRO, call your worker, keep calling them, keep bothering them.
Dale: Well, they have more teeth now in recent years, do they not? They can
yank your driver’s license.
Lorne: Yeah. Yeah. Passport.
Dale: They can do some fairly interesting things if you don’t pay.
Lorne: Well, that usually gets people’s attention, when they say
‘We’re going to take away your driver’s license’. That’s where a lot of
people suddenly perk up and say, ‘Wait a second, I owe support, I’ve got to
do something about it.’
Dale: What happens to the obligation after the child graduates from
university and off he goes and there’s no more current support payment
obligation, but there is that backlog, does it just disappear in time, or
is it always there on the books and the guy has to pay or the woman has to
pay?
Lorne: You have to? Yeah, the payor. So an adult child is no longer
entitled to support and the support has to end.
Dale: Right, but there was a lot of back support that wasn’t paid?
Lorne: That continues. That’s going to continue to get paid, and
sometimes you can make a deal with FRO to say, ‘Look, I can’t afford $1,000
a month, the arrears are $20,000, I can’t afford $1,000, I can afford $500
a month.’ FRO has the ability to negotiate that type of arrangement, as far
as paying the arrears. What I thought you were going to ask me is, where an
adult child is no longer entitled to support, it’s also an issue sometimes
where the recipient says, ‘You know, my child is still entitled to
support,’ and the payor says, ‘No, he’s not entitled to support, he’s
finished school, or he’s only going part-time’, or whatever. So the payor
wants to terminate the support obligation, and the recipient says no. So
that’s another issue, right, should the support end or shouldn’t it end? If
the parties agree, again, you get it in writing, that support ends, and
that’s the end of it. But sometimes it may be necessary to go to court to
terminate the support.
Dale: Because the argument is over the status of the word ‘dependent’, are
you still dependent or are you independent, right?
Lorne: Right. Let’s say the child is going, is studying, and maybe the
child doesn’t have a full course load. There may be reasons why the child
doesn’t have a full course load, the dad may say, ‘You’re not enrolled in a
full time program of education, I shouldn’t be paying you support’, and mom
says, ‘Well, our son is depressed’ or ‘Our son is having difficulties in
school, that’s why he can’t. ‘
Dale: There could be an argument.
Lorne: There could be an argument, yes. So there’s all those different
variations.
Dale: Lorne Fine is our guest, he’s our family and divorce lawyer, if you
have a question for Lorne Fine, give us a call. 416 360 0740, or 866 740
4740, as Lorne goes through his Post-it notes to get the right ones
arranged for us for our next segment.
Recording: You’re listening to an exclusive podcast of Goldhawk Fights
Back for You on AM740, Zoomer Radio. Goldhawk Fights Back For You airs
Monday to Friday, 11 to 1 on AM740, Zoomer Radio.
Dale: Okay, we’re back with Lorne Fine, our family and divorce lawyer. Here
are the numbers if you have a question for Lorne. 416 360 0740 or 866 740
4740. We’ve been talking about child support. How does support for the
spouse with the children figure into all of this?
Lorne: Spousal support and child support?
Dale: Yeah, is spousal support mandated the same way that child support is
mandated?
Lorne: There’s the spousal support advisory guidelines, it’s not
necessarily a table like this.
Dale: Not in the book, right?
Lorne: Not in the book. It’s a formula, there’s actually. we have
software, we can calculate the range of support. It’s complicated.
Dale: Why am I not surprised, it’s complicated, right?
Lorne: It’s supposed to be easy, it’s not easy. There’s a low range, a
mid range and a high range, depending on how many kids, depending on the
duration of the relationship, it’s complicated and there’s variables.
Dale: Does it naturally follow that every spouse who has custody of the
children would necessarily be entitled to spousal support?
Lorne: Not necessarily. It depends on the duration of the
relationship, it depends on the parties’ incomes, there’s lots of
variables. Maybe the recipient is making more money than the payor. So
should the payor pay her spousal support? Not necessarily.
Dale: But if the custodial parent is making a lot more money than the
person who’s supplying support to the children, can that be used as an
argument that the paying parent should pay more, because his or her spouse
is making a whole lot more money?
Lorne: No, there’s totally.
Dale: The obligation is there regardless, right?
Lorne: It doesn’t make a difference how much money. as far as child
support goes, it doesn’t make a difference what the recipient is making. If
there’s two kids, if we use that $70,000 example, and it’s $1,045. if
you’re a payor and you’re making $70,000, assuming there’s no other
variables, straight child support, then even if your recipient is making
$300,000, you’re still going to have to pay what the guidelines.
Dale: It wouldn’t make any difference at all.
Lorne: No. The argument ‘She’s making more money, she doesn’t need my
support’ doesn’t fly. Like I said, it’s…
Dale: Because you have that legal obligation as a spouse.
Lorne: Right. You have a legal obligation. So the recipient’s income
is not a good argument. I’ve heard all of them.
Dale: It sounds like you’ve said that to several judges in your life.
Lorne: Not judges. Clients. The clients will say, ‘But she doesn’t
need it!’
Dale: And you say, ‘That’s not a good argument.’
Lorne: Not a good argument.
Dale: 416 360 0740 or 866 740 4740, if you have a question about love and
marriage. Well, actually, divorce, we’re at the other end of it, although
love and marriage figure into it, because divorce is. Initially it does,
but it’s also a very emotional time that both spouses go through, that
makes it kind of different than other kinds of laws, doesn’t it, areas of
law.
Lorne: It is, and I frequently get comments from other lawyers like,
‘I don’t know how you could do family, it’s so emotional.’ It is, it’s much
different than corporate law, it’s much different than real estate law.
It’s not as, corporate law or real estate law is by the numbers, there’s
not that emotional involvement, emotional attachment. So yeah, it’s
different.
Dale: Why did you pick it in the first place, have I already asked you
that, I don’t remember?
Lorne: I don’t think you ever have.
Dale: Well, why did you?
Lorne: Maybe let’s pick this up in another show.
Dale: I’m asking because my son’s going to law school in the fall.
Lorne: I know he is.
Dale: So I give him all these tidbits of information.
Lorne: My parents got separated when I was 11, maybe that’s why. I was
an expert by the time I was 13.
Dale: So you’ve been there, and you thought, ‘ I might as well turn this
into a profession.’
Lorne: I knew all the family law when I was 13.
Dale: Was it hard to pick?
Lorne: Was it hard to pick?
Dale: Who knows…
Lorne: Who knows. It was something that I guess I just had a knack
for, and I started to do it more and more, and you know what, it can be
very gratifying. You develop relationships with your clients, I just came
back from a client’s wedding, his second wedding, he invited me to his
wedding, he was so happy I came to his second wedding. I helped him with
his custody concerns in his first marriage. Actually, yeah, he shook my
hand.
Dale: He’s hoping, probably, he won’t need your services again, I’m
thinking.
Lorne: Well, I hope not, yes. He’s a nice guy.
Dale: All right. 416 360 0740, 866 740 4740. Here’s Erica on her cell
phone. Erica, do you have a question?
Erica: I do. I have a scenario, in that if one spouse is working and
is the breadwinner of the family, there is no impending divorce at this
point, but if there was, would she have to pay support to her spouse if he
chooses not to work?
Lorne: Okay, so both spouses are working now?
Erica: No. One spouse is working now, the other is not, and there’s no
reason the other spouse can’t work, he just chooses not to. And there’s
three dependent children.
Lorne: So that happens quite often. So the argument is that the person
that’s working would say that the other spouse has an obligation to work,
the other spouse can work, the other spouse is intentionally underemployed
or unemployed. I assume the other spouse has skills, what kind of skills
does the other spouse have?
Erica: The other spouse, not a university education, but can do
anything from telecommunication to even working at Walmart, whatever.
Lorne: Right. So I always say that if someone’s healthy and somebody’s
capable, they can always make minimum wage, they can always do something.
So I would say it’s at least minimum wage, but if they have skills, the
person would go on Statistics Canada and look to see how much, what’s the
range of income somebody with those skills could earn? So if that person
has telecommunications skills, you could look up online as to how much
income a person with those skills could make, and a court could impute
income to that person.
Dale: In other words, as you said earlier, the judge could say, ‘That’s not
a good argument.’
Lorne: You can’t just say, ‘Well, I can’t work and you’ve got to pay
me support.’ The argument is, you’re capable of working, you’re healthy.
Erica: So the judge could actually force the other spouse to work?
Lorne: Not necessarily force, but say, ‘Look, you’re not working, we
don’t believe you can’t work, so we’re going to say that for support
purposes, you can earn $50,000, let’s say, based on your skills.’ And let’s
say that the other spouse makes $50,000. Well, there’s not going to be any
spousal support, because a judge imputed income to the recipient.
Erica: Oh, okay.
Dale: So there would be no spousal support there.
Lorne: No spousal support. So one spouse would have to demonstrate
that the other spouse is intentionally underemployed or unemployed.
Dale: Okay, Erica, thanks very much, I hope that helps with your friends.
Here is Jean calling from Pickering. Jean what’s your question?
Jean: My question is similar. A friend of ours’ daughter was divorced a
couple of years ago and was working part time, and we’re having the same
problem in our family, and her lawyer told her that she had to get a full
time job, at that time she was working part time, and that it would make a
difference whether they had to pay so much spousal support. So I’m trying
to find out if that is correct.
Lorne: Okay, so what you’re saying is, it was the person that was
working part time or.
Jean: The wife is working part time.
Lorne: The wife is working part time and she was the recipient?
Jean: Yes. And her lawyer said, before they went to court or
something, that she had to get a full time job. Which she went out and did.
Lorne: Okay. Well, the Divorce Act states that a support recipient is
obligated to become self supporting. So that’s what the Act provides, but
if there’s good reasons for the recipient not getting a full time job, if
the recipient tries to find a job and can’t find a job, maybe the recipient
needs to retrain. there’s all kinds of different reasons why somebody can’t
get a full time job. A judge is not going to penalize the person, at least
initially, at the outset of a matter, if you’re not working. But if
something like that goes on for years, a judge is going to say, ‘Well, what
are you doing, how come you’re not working?’ If there’s spousal support
paid for a number of years, a judge is going to say, ‘What’s the reason for
you not working?’ So it depends on when the claim is being made.
Jean: They’ve always worked part time, and didn’t want to work full
time.
Lorne: So if they always worked part time during the whole course of
the relationship, and.
Dale: Could they be compelled to.
Lorne: Well, like I said, it depends on what they’re doing. Is a job
available? I don’t think necessarily a judge is going to penalize somebody
at the outset because they’re working part time and not full time, it
depends on what they’re doing. So when the lawyer says ‘you have to get a
job full time’, the Divorce Act says that you’re obligated to become self
supporting.
Dale: Doesn’t go into the specificity of whether or not it’s full time or
part time.
Lorne: Right.
Dale: Jean, I hope that.
Jean: Was working part time for a doctor, and then went out and got a
full time job with a veterinarian.
Lorne: Okay. Well, if she can work full time, that’s great, it’s good
she’s working full time if she can do it, if it’s not a burden and she can
manage.
Dale: Jean, thanks very much, I hope that helps in that situation, it’s
12:47. If you have a question for Lorne Fine, 416 360 0740 or 866 740 4740.
Recording: You’re listening to an exclusive podcast of Goldhawk Fights Back
For You on AM 740, Zoomer Radio. Goldhawk Fights Back For You airs Monday
through Friday, 11 to 1 on AM740, Zoomer Radio.
Dale: Okay, it’s 12:50, Lorne Fine is here, we’re talking about divorce
issues. Let’s get to the phones right away so we can get as many people on
as we can. Here is Karen calling from Dundalk, Karen, what’s your question?
Karen: Hi Lorne, hi Dale. My question is, in April of 2011 my support
deduction order was sent into FRO, the ex-husband was making approximately
$220,000 a year versus my $45,000, so the high end of the SAG indicated
about $3,300 a month. So we went in at $2,500, but also on the court order
was court costs of $2,800, equalization of $3,200, and personal debt to me
to the tune of $95,000. So the chief enforcement officer of FRO called me.
Lorne: Sorry, let me just stop you for one second, I don’t know what
that means, personal debt to you of $95,000. Was that part of the EP or no?
Karen: When he signed the house over to me, happily, there was $50,000
worth of liens on it due to his gambling addiction, and he had to have
known about them, but I didn’t. So when he came off title, those debts
became my debts. So I had to, I was forced to sell the house eventually,
because I just couldn’t keep it up any longer, and plus those liens were
growing like weeds as long as I.
Dale: Okay. Well, get back on your main track here in terms of what you’re
adding up, what you want Lorne to.
Karen: Okay. The following month after the support deduction order
went in, he conveniently went on disability. We’re talking April 2011. He’s
still on disability, he has let the arrears mount up to, right now they’re
sitting at about $53,000, so in this past November, FRO sent him a letter
for a default hearing. It’s been – these default hearings have been
adjourned three times, because he is very familiar with delay tactics and
stall tactics.
Dale: Karen, can you get to a question here, because we have a lot of other
people here I’d like to try and get on.
Kay: Okay, my question is, when this finally goes to court, what are the
chances of actually ever getting these arrears? I was listening earlier
that arrears aren’t simply just dismissed, but I’m waiting to be served
with the motion to change anytime before September 4th, because that’s the
next court date, and I can very well hear a judge saying, ‘You have a job,
this man doesn’t, why do you think he should be paying you anything?’ He
only agreed to spousal support in contemplation of going on disability.
Lorne: So he agreed to spousal support, he didn’t know he was going to
be disabled when he agreed to the spousal support?
Karen: I do believe this was part of the plan.
Dale: So he’s pulling a fast one, is what you’re trying to say, right?
Karen: Yeah, we’re talking about a certifiable con artist here.
Lorne: Okay, so the issue…
Dale: At this point, Lorne, maybe you can offer a little advice.
Karen: …. at least good to. Will FRO continue to take money out of
his disability check to cover the arrears? Even if they terminate the
spousal support at this point, will he still owe this $52,000?
Dale: All right Karen, let Lorne offer you some advice here.
Karen: Okay.
Lorne: So these arrears mounted because of spousal support, right?
Karen: Yes.
Lorne: There’s no child support obligation.
Karen: No, there’s no child support.
Lorne: And is he really disabled, does he have medical evidence he’s
disabled?
Karen: Well, clearly he’s made it onto long term, it’s not that easy
to get on long term.
Lorne: I wouldn’t say that, if he truly has suffered a change in his
circumstances, a dramatic change in his circumstances, it’s possible for a
judge to go back and vary the quantum of arrears. His problem is going to
be, he’s delayed his motion to change, right? He hasn’t done it yet, right?
Karen: Not as yet, and, I mean, he’s let these arrears mount up for
two years, knowing he wasn’t going back to work, so he had ample
opportunity to get this process started two years ago.
Lorne: So your argument is going to be, he delayed in bringing a
motion to change, that’s one of the factors a court would look at as to
whether the quantum of arrears should be varied. It looks like, because
income is dramatically decreased, it’s going to be a hard argument to say
he should keep paying the current ongoing quantum of spousal support,
right?
Karen: Yes. And I’m quite willing to lower it.
Dale: But in terms of the backlog, that’s really what you’re talking about.
Lorne: Yeah. Well, the longer he delays bringing a motion to change,
the worse off he is and the better off you are, right? You’re going to say,
‘What took you so long, I’m relying on these arrears of support.’ A judge
could go back and vary it, but usually they go back. They could go back to
the date of notice. Did he tell you, ‘I’m disabled, I can’t pay it’?
Karen: No, it all came through FRO. Because the original amount of
$2,500 was showing up as under $2,000 while he was on short term, and then
there was a three month period of nothing at all.
Dale: Karen, I’m going to have to move on to some other callers here.
Lorne, can you offer some final advice for Karen, please?
Lorne: I think you need to consult a lawyer. I think you should go
call a lawyer.
Dale: But you’ve given her a few hints in terms of…
Lorne: Call the Law Society, FRO is going to enforce the ongoing and
the arrears as long as they can, but keep on calling FRO, maybe they can
move forward with the default hearing or take away his driver’s license or
something of that.
Karen: Oh, they’ve done that.
Dale: Oh, good. All right, thanks very much, Karen. Here’s Dawn calling
from York region, Dawn, do you have a question?
Dawn: Yes, I do. I have made a claim for spousal support, and the
other parties do not agree with that, claiming that I currently work full
time and earn my yearly salary. However, my ex makes more than double what
I currently earn. How is that looked upon?
Dale: Yeah, how good an argument is that, Lorne?
Lorne: How long were you together for?
Dawn: It was an eight year marriage.
Lorne: And did you live together before that?
Dawn: We did, for two years, and we have two small children that I
currently receive child support for.
Lorne: Okay, so the total duration of your relationship is ten years,
and you have two small kids.
Dawn: Yes.
Lorne: And he’s making double your income.
Dawn: More than double.
Lorne: And did you work during the marriage?
Dawn: I did, and I had two years off for maternity leave.
Lorne: You worked on a full time basis during the marriage?
Dawn: Yes, I did.
Lorne: Are you doing the same job now as you did back then?
Dawn: For most of it, yes.
Lorne: So it seems to me that ten years, nowadays, is not a short term
marriage. it’s not a long term marriage, but it’s not a short term
relationship. There’s two kids from the relationship, you took time off for
maternity leave, certainly there’s some type of compensation that I would
think you’re entitled to. Do you have a lawyer now?
Dawn: Yes, I do.
Lorne: So the lawyer will sit down with you and run through the
numbers what his income is, what your income is, consider what his child
support obligation is, and he should be able to give you a range of spousal
support, and how much you’re actually talking about.
Dale: Well, spousal support wouldn’t end up being zero, would it?
Lorne: I don’t see it as zero.
Dawn: So there would be some spousal support of some sort.
Lorne: I think so. What’s. I don’t have particulars, but what’s his
income?
Dawn: His income is approximately $112,000 a year.
Lorne: So he’s making a good income, and a ten year relationship, and
you’re making around $60,000?
Dawn: $51,000.
Lorne: So it’s all. another factor is what your needs are. Do you need
for him to pay you support? He has the means, he’s making $112,000, but do
you require his support? That’s another issue, if you’re running a deficit.
Dawn: Yes, I.
Dale: Dawn, I’m sorry, I’m going to have to go. I hope that helps, talk to
your lawyer. We’ve been talking to our lawyer here at Goldhawk Fights Back,
Lorne Fine. Lorne, thanks very much for coming, and we’re totally out of
time as usual.
Lorne: My pleasure.
Dale: Come back sometime soon, okay?
Lorne: My pleasure, thank you very much.
Do You Need Help with Child Support or Spousal Support Matters in Toronto?
If you are looking for legal assistance with child support or spousal support matters, our experienced Toronto Family Law and Divorce Lawyers at Fine & Associates can provide the personal and professional services you need. Contact us through the form at the right, or visit our contact page.