Spousal Support

The landscape for spousal support has changed dramatically in recent years. Not only have there been a number of significant cases in the courts since I wrote the article below in 2001, but we also have a new system for deciding these cases. The "Spousal Support Advisory Guidelines" effectively have the force of law in Canada. These guidelines are not really guidelines at all. Rather, through the development of case law, they must be applied and a judge is obliged to give written reasons where he/she departs from these guidelines.

The "Spousal Support Advisory Guidelines" were authored by two well known and highly respected law professors along with the assistance of a number of high profile family law lawyers across Canada. These guidelines are lengthy and often difficult to understand and even more difficult to apply without a computer program such as Chequemate (from Divorcemate). While these guidelines were to bring more certainty and uniformity to the law of spousal support in Canada, and while these guidelines were supposed to merely reflect mathematically what the courts were doing in any event, the reality according to many is quite different.

Calculations can become quite complicated where the spouse who is obligated to pay spousal support is also the recipient spouse for the purposes of child support.

These guidelines were not passed by Canada's Parliament and case law has effectively given them great legal force; they are not really "voluntary" as their authors led us to believe. Still, in appropriate scenarios, there is room to argue that the guidelines should not apply in some situations.

Spousal support has become more complicated with the application of Canada's "Spousal Support Advisory Guidelines".