British Columbia Family Law Blog

The BC family law lawyers at the MacLean Family Law Group have reviewed British Columbia family law and BC spousal support cases that have applied or at least considered the new spousal support guidelines and note an early trend showing the majority of BC family law spousal support decisions have awarded amounts less than the low end of the guidelines.  One judge even commented that the guidelines do not reflect past case and statute law awards!

We provide a snap shot of 7 British Columbia family law cases.  For full details of each BC spousal support case sumarized below please contact Lorne MacLean at our head office in Vancouver.  The whole issue of BC spousal support will no doubt be canvassed in the Supreme Court of Canada in Leskun on November 18, 2005.

In the recent British Columbia Court of Appeal family law case of Devick v. Devick the BC Court of appeal dealt with a Family Relations Act claim for compensation for work done by a spouse on a ranch owned by the other spouse's corporation.  The case dealt with how a compensation order must consider the ability of the owning spouse to pay compensation as well as what the test is for a constructive and resulting trust claim by a spouse against an asset owned by a company rather than the opposing spouse.  We extract the salient BC Family Property and BC Family asset principles to be applied according to the Brtish Columbia family law decision in this case.

The hard working BC family law and BC divorce law lawyers at the MacLean Family Law Group www.bcfamilylaw.ca are heading to the Supreme Court of Canada on a huge BC spousal support case dealing with spousal support and misconduct, spousal support and how family assets should be considered in spousal support issues, spousal support and the duty of self sufficiency, and spousal support and how spousal support orders can be reviewed once they are made.  Writers and academics as well as the public are waiting to see if spousal misconduct can be properly considered in Canadian divorce cases as it was previously thought Canda had no fault divorce laws.

Mr. MacLean lead counsel is now 2 for 2 on applications to obtain leave to the Suprement Court of Canda and looks forward to leading MacLean Family Law Group on the upcoming November 18, 2005 hearing in the Supreme Court of Canada in Ottawa.

The MacLean Family Law Group considers itself to be BC's Family Law Firm.  Founded by Lorne N.  MacLean as a successor firm to the firm he founded in 1983 the firm has grown rapidly to four lawyers and two offices.  We handle only family law and divorce cases including BC child custody and guardianship, BC spousal support including advisory guideline matters, BC child support and BC family asset and property division cases both for married persons and those in common law relationships.  We act throughout British Columbia and the lawyers pictured above from left to right, being Lorne MacLean, Shelagh Kinney, Alison Ouellet and Shawna Specht board a floatplane on a firm retreat.

The spousal support advisory guidelines have now been applied in over 50 cases in Canada and our own BC Court of Appeal has just applied them in the 2005 case of Yemchuk.  While some BC judges have declined to follow the guidelines, this latest judgment may help parties who want the guidelines to be used in their BC family law spousal support cases.  We extract the judgment of our Court of Appeal below and it is important to point out that while the guidelines are not supposed to deal with BC spousal support entitlement they arguably provide automatic entitlement when there is a disparity of income.  The lawyers at MacLean Family Law Group will deal with the issue of entitlment in the November 18, 2005 Leskun case that will be heard by the Supreme Court of Canada on November 18, 2005.  Madam Justice Prowse speaking for the unanimous panel held:

Lorne MacLean successfully obtains a complete retroactive correction of BC child support arrears and cancellation of all FMEP enforcement proceedings in Nanaimo BC on September 14, 2005.  Mr. MacLean's client S.M.'s response to this victory was to say "Lorne MacLean is an amazing lawyer".  If you have a BC child support case raising either present or past payment issues call Mr. MacLean immediately.

In our recent July 21, 2005 article on separation agreements  and BC child custody and BC child guardianship and BC child access  we opined that the test to vary a BC separation agreement's custody terms was now higher than the test to vary a custody order under the Gordon v. Goertz test. The Alberta decision of Hearn applied the Miglin test for variation of a custody agreement and a similar test was applied by Martinson J in L.E.G v. A.G. but a recent BC Court of Appeal decision reflects a more traditional approach to custody arrangements made in separation agreements and applies a much lower test to vary.  In the 2005 case of Henderson, the BCCA held as follows: