As of December 18, 2023, the Court of King’s Bench has established the requirement that four mandatory pre-court requirements are met prior to a person bringing forward an application, which also includes filing of a family docket court notice to attend.  These requirements apply to court cases in Edmonton Calgary. What are the Requirements? These are required for people who are both self-representing or have counsel. Completion of the online Parenting After Separation Course (PAS) (i ..read more

When calculating spousal support in family law cases, calculating the amount of spousal support will depend on specific factors.   As a starting point when entitlement has been confirmed or assumed, family lawyers rely upon the Spousal Support Advisory Guidelines (“the Guidelines”) to calculate spousal support.  These Guidelines were provided by a Government of Canada working group back in 2005 and have been updated annually.   The Guidelines provide calculations based on the base factors of ..read more

The family court system is under strain with litigants that seek assistance in resolving matters, however, being in court very often does not lead to the resolution of these matters.   Court applications are extremely time consuming, decisions, if made, are piecemeal leaving many outstanding issues without fulsome resolution, and the experience is often highly adversarial.   It can often be heard a Judge telling a self-represented litigant in family court that they should seek legal advic ..read more

Along with the encouragement of the Court to try settlement or resolution outside of a courtroom, there are upcoming changes to the previous DRO program at the Court of King’s Bench with an emphasis on parties to the litigation having quality settlement discussions before appearing before a Justice for a decision.  The new program requires that the parties to a child support matter have provided and have received disclosure, in order to successfully make offers and review recommendations for ..read more

The courts in Alberta, and in provinces across Canada have acknowledged and built upon the civil tort for a breach of privacy which can be found to occur when a person publicly exposes another person’s private images and videos.  The most common cases of this is when a former partner/spouse uses privately held images and/or videos of their former partner/spouse that they were given.  Where tort cases have found fault hinges on possession and use of these images and/or videos, as the expectat ..read more

“ I’ll quit my job and flip burgers for a living!”  -- it is one of the biggest cliches family lawyers regularly hear from a parent or spouse who earns a high income.  Until recently, the law may not have penalized the party who went through on their threat.  The Court of Appeal in Alberta over twenty-one years ago rendered a decision in the case Hunt v Smolis-Hunt, 2001 ABCA 229, which held that the payor needed to have a specific intent to show that they quit a more lucrative job specif ..read more