We start with a short recap of what happened to the Ontario courts in March 2020. On March 15 the world changed for all lawyers in Ontario. With one announcement from Chief Justice Geoffrey Morawetz of the Superior Court of Justice in Ontario, the legal profession was turned on its ear. No longer were lawyers able to access the courts as usual. The move to implement provincial emergency protocols due to the COVID-19 pandemic began. Note that the courts have never been closed. However, they have strictly reduced cases being heard. The first Superior Court of Justice Notice to the Profession wa ..read more

Kathryn received her B.A. and M.A. in Political Science and began her first career in Marketing and Public Relations. Kathryn obtained her law degree from Osgoode in 2001 and was called to the Bar in 2002. She articled at a large boutique litigation firm in downtown Toronto. In 2006 she chose family law as her specialty and has practiced exclusively in family law since that time. In 2017 Kathryn started her own firm. Kathryn is trained in alternative dispute resolution methods, including Collaborative Family Law and Family Arbitration. In 2015 Kathryn was appointed as a Dispute Resolution Off ..read more

Over the course of the last two and a half years we have endured the shock and awe of the COVID-19 pandemic. No one will ever forget the first shutdown of the Superior Court of Ontario in March 2020. Two years later, our legal landscape has changed. Now that the pandemic has “subsided,” courts are returning to in-person conferences, motions and trials. Appearing in person before a judge is an integral part of our legal process. However, it is just as important to understand the dynamics of the courtroom and how to relate to and manage your judge. What happens when your judge is not in tune wi ..read more

A divorce can be an emotional, messy and expensive process, complicated by the abundance of forms one needs fill out depending on the situation. To help streamline that process in a country where about 40 per cent of first marriages end in divorce, Toronto lawyer Kathryn Hendrikx has created software that helps people save time and money. The software launch is timely — many lawyers, including Hendrikx, say they see a spike in divorces after the holidays. "You don't know whether your matter is going to cost $3,000 or $30,000," said Hendrikx, noting retaining a lawyer alone can cost thousands ..read more

A software program that helps family-law litigants fill out paperwork on the cheap A divorce is a harrowing life experience. It’s also confusing and expensive. A marriage, after all, is a legal contract that affects everything from real estate to bank loans to child custody. And so, unsurprisingly, the task of dissolving that contract is a bureaucratic nightmare. At every turn, there is a new form: to initiate divorce proceedings, to make changes to an agreed-upon settlement or to disclose information about financial status and assets. And, of course, these forms are freighted with long-winde ..read more

The COVID-19 pandemic has significantly increased conflict between custodial and access parents, and this has been particularly acute in the cases of families with supervised access orders. One of the side effects of the pandemic has been a lack of neutral supervised access centres and services; thus, parents with court-ordered supervised access schedules have found their parenting time disrupted by the provincial lockdowns. Both private and not-for profit centres have closed. In the early days, parents with unsupervised access had to improvise, meeting at a park or the end of the driveway; h ..read more

COVID-19-related separations have been called the tsunami of separations and the avalanche of applicants. A Sept.12 BBC News headline heralded a “ ‘Divorce Boom’ forecast as lockdown sees advice queries rise.” Have family law lawyers in Ontario seen a significant spike in separations over these past six months during COVID-19? While there are no official statistics relating to increased separations to date, anecdotally, across the province, family law lawyers are seeing an uptake of new clients. Family law professionals are also spending much more time with current retained clients who are fe ..read more

Society and businesses are early adopters of technological innovation — they are quick and eager to automate simple tasks and create efficiencies and convenience. Just last month, before seeing my dentist I was able to input my personal information online, view my previous visits on the system, confirm my appointment and receive an automatic calendar invitation for my next appointment. Technology has become so enmeshed in modern life, from Google Maps to online banking, that citizens engaging with the Canadian legal system are wondering why the same level of service and convenience is not ava ..read more