Yes, it can. If you owe tax when you put your child on title, your child can become personally responsible for part of that debt. This holds even if the child paid nothing, never lived as an owner, and only signed because the bank needed another income on the mortgage application. A recent Tax Court...Read More
It can, in the right case. A family court in Ontario has the power to make a vesting order, which takes a property interest out of one person’s name and puts it in another’s without a sale and without anyone signing a transfer. But Ontario’s Court of Appeal has just reminded judges and lawyers that...Read More
In support cases, one party will sometimes ask the court to treat the other as though they earn an income they are not actually earning — for example, arguing that a spouse who is not working should be treated as earning at least minimum wage. This is called imputing income. What often gets missed is...Read More
In an Ontario family case, a motion is not usually the first step. The rules push parties toward a case conference first, on the view that most cases settle there and that opening with a motion produces an affidavit war that damages everyone, the children most of all. The approach works. The large majority of...Read More
Two business people agreed to work together on a large government order and to split the profits between them. They did it over text messages and phone calls, across a few days. A written agreement was drafted. It was never signed. When the relationship broke down, the company that walked away argued there had never...Read More
Every family lawyer gets asked this. Usually the client has already done it and wants to know whether it helps. Sometimes there are months of recordings sitting on a phone before anyone thinks to ask. A recent Ontario decision admitted secretly recorded phone calls in a family case, and it is being passed around as...Read More
Most civil cases run on documents. Bank records, text messages, emails, invoices, logs of who accessed what and when. When something important is missing, the explanation is usually ordinary. A file was misplaced. A phone was replaced. A company purged old records on the schedule it has always followed. Occasionally the explanation is not ordinary...Read More
It is the most common instruction a family lawyer hears. Just ask the kids. They know who they want to live with. Ontario courts do listen to children. But a child’s wishes are one input, not the decision. The gap between those two things is where most parents get caught out. How A Child’s Voice...Read More
A will gets read after the only person who can explain it is gone. Sometimes what sits on the page is plainly not what the family understood was intended. Ontario courts can correct a will in that situation. The power is narrower than most people expect, and it turns on a question that has nothing...Read More
Two weeks ago Ontario changed how bail money works. On the last day of August, a court suspended the change. If you or someone in your family is facing a bail hearing right now, here is where things actually stand. What The New Rules Did For as long as most people have dealt with the...Read More
