The only way legal disputes ever seem to get resolved on TV or in the movies is in court. That’s understandable, because the other ways we resolve legal disputes are, well, boring. I don’t think we are ever going to see a prime-time legal drama about people going to mediation. However, the … [Read more...]
The Critical Role of Public Legal Education in Societies Governed by the Rule of Law
At some point in high school, we learn that we live in a nomocracy, which is a fancy ten-cent word for a society governed by the rule of law. The whole “governed by the rule of law” thing is an especially important quality of democracies like ours. It includes the following rights: All of … [Read more...]
DBS v SRG: Retroactive child support claims
20/20: Looking back over the last 20 years I was not short of choices when LawNow asked me to write about one of the most important family law cases in the last twenty years. After consulting with Sarah Dargatz, my fellow columnist on family law issues, I decided to talk about DBS v SRG, a … [Read more...]
Important Changes to the Law Are Coming: Mark your calendar!
EDITOR'S NOTE | Changes to Canada's Divorce Act now come into effect on March 1, 2021 (not July 1, 2020). Two big changes to the legislation on family law are coming next year: one that’s important if you live in Alberta and another that’s important if you’re getting divorced no matter where … [Read more...]
Alternatives to Court: Parenting Coordination
This is the last column in LawNow’s series on resolving family law disputes out of court. The other columns in this series include Sarah Dargatz’s articles on collaborative negotiation and mediation, and my article on arbitration. In this column, I’m going to talk about parenting coordination. This … [Read more...]
Alternatives to Court: Arbitration
In our first column in this series, I introduced the basic alternatives to resolving family law disputes in court – negotiation, mediation and arbitration – and talked about some of the surprising research on lawyers’ views about litigation. In the second column, Sarah Dargatz wrote about … [Read more...]
Resolving Family Law Disputes: Alternatives to Court
When adults leave a serious relationship, they have a lot of decisions to make. Sometimes these are small decisions, about who can keep the dishes or the books, but more often they are big decisions. Things like where the children should mostly live, how their time will be divided, who should pay … [Read more...]
Domestic Violence and Family Law Disputes
Domestic violence – or family violence or intimate partner violence, call it what you will – is a serious problem in both intact and separated families. According to a 2013 report from Statistics Canada, there are 252.9 victims of domestic violence per 100,000 population, and domestic violence makes … [Read more...]
Finding the Best Ways Forward: Report on the Symposium on Children’s Participation in Justice Processes
In mid-September 2017, the Canadian Research Institute for Law and the Family and the Alberta Office of the Child and Youth Advocate ("OCYA") hosted an innovative two-day national symposium on children’s participation in justice processes in Calgary, Alberta. The symposium brought together leading … [Read more...]
Conflict Between Parents, Part 3: More Strategies to Reduce Conflict, Active Listening and Looping
In Part 1 of this article, I wrote about the effects conflict between parents can have on their children. In Part 2, I talked about a number of techniques to defuse or diminish conflict, including a few basic communication strategies. In this, the final part of the series, I’m going to talk about … [Read more...]