Navigating divorce is traumatic, emotionally draining and filled with powerlessness and fear. In such a tumultuous time in your life, finding comfort in prayer can be what helps you survive and persevere. After practicing divorce law for 30 years, I have found the one prayer that resonates deeply with my divorcing spouses is the Serenity Prayer. The Serenity Prayer, originally associated with Alcoholics Anonymous, transcends its origins to offer comfort and guidance to separating spouses struggling with divorce. The profound words of this prayer enc ..read more

Lending rates, equity markets and real estate values are not as big a risk to a person’s net worth as is the break-up of their relationship or marriage.  Sharing a person’s net worth, after deducting large legal bills and court costs are the greatest risk to personal wealth.   Cohabitation Agreements have become a standard part of modern relationships, offering couples a mechanism to address financial matters before sharing a home and a life.  However, as with any legal contract, such agreements come with their own set of challenges, each demanding careful consideration to ensur ..read more

HIRING A DIVORCE LAWYER OR MEDIATOR?    READ THE EXPERIENCE OF PAST CLIENTS FIRST From Rotten Tomatoes, to TripAdvisor, to Michelin, we rely on past customers’ experiences to avoid disappointment. We live in a world where we heavily rely on other customers’ past experiences to determine if we wish to purchase products or services from a professional or business. We heavily rely on the volume, consistency, and recency of such reporting. Customer reviews have become the primary source of opinions that customers rely upon before making a purchase of a product or service. Many onlin ..read more

Toronto has some of the worse (and best) Divorce Mediators The breakdown of a personal relationship is…well…very personal. When an intimate and longterm spousal relationship ends, plenty of emotions are triggered.  Spouses usually feel scared, overwhelmed and anxious. There is a lot at stake.   It is at this very moment that they need a steady hand, a calm voice and some fatherly wisdom.   Most mediators know how to handle the mechanics of constructing a parenting plan, arranging the sale or buyout of a matrimonial home and identifying and dividing family property and debt.  ..read more

After 30 years of serving as a Toronto divorce lawyer, I have witnessed hundreds of spouses choose their lawyers while in an emotionally charged state. At the moment when spouses break up (right when they hire a lawyer), they are usually feeling angry, scared, and insecure. Often, they are looking for a lawyer who will be what they are not at that moment—tough, forceful, and focused on winning. They may even be searching for ‘the aggressive lawyer’. Most of these people end up very disappointed in their choice. Why? Because after a few months, they end up with: 1. A matching ‘aggressive ..read more

A new research study of recently separated adults revealed that participants who spent more time with their ex-spouse tended to have poor sleep and worse health.  In the paper, “Sleep Efficiency and Naturalistically-Observed Social Behavior Following Marital Separation: The Critical Role of Contact With an Ex-Partner” published in the Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, researchers Andrea M. Coppola, Matthias R. Mehl, Allison M. Tackman, Spencer C. Dawson, Karey L. O’Hara, and David A. Sbarra report groundbreaking social science findings. Recog ..read more

The subject of the child’s mental health is very common in many of my Post-Divorce Parenting Coordination cases. I have often found that one of the biggest drivers of a child’s poor mental health is the inter-parental conflict that the child has been exposed to.  This invariably is often caused by poor inter-parental communication, which is often the cause of the divorce. In so many of my cases, I find that the two parents entered into marriage and became parents without really communicating and knowing what the other parent’s family values are, what their parenting style is and how they ..read more

Spouses who are undergoing separation and divorce are often living in very uncomfortable circumstances. While their family life is falling apart, they still need to manage their children’s lives, their work lives and their financial obligations. Each and every day that the details of their separation are not resolved creates undue anguish to them and their children. For them, the speed of resolution is just as important as the resolution itself. Mediation/arbitration offers benefits that no other legal process can match.  The spouses mutually choose their mediator/arbitrator, ba ..read more

My wife, Samantha and I just came back from the Stratford Festival. We saw (and loved) the play RENT. The main song from the play, “Seasons of Love”, has been ringing in my ear. I have been reading its lyrics. It’s amazing how art, in this case, musical theater, can project a light on humanity, family relationships, and, in my professional life, family breakdown, divorce and post-separation parenting. RENT is a salute to the Bohemian life of a group of artists in New York City. These young artists living in Greenwich Village are pursuing careers, fame and love, while dealing with the AIDS cris ..read more

Why be worried if a judge orders support based on an Imputed Income? Because it is nearly impossible to ever seek a change to the support order by proving that the imputed income is more than your actual income. This conclusion was brought forward again in the case of Holt v Read, 2023 ONSC 1054 (CanLII). In that case, the father asked to retroactively adjust child support payable back to the date of the original support order. In that past order, the judge imputed an income to the father of $150,000 per year, and ordered him to pay child support of $1,992 per month for his two children. The c ..read more