Family

  • July 24, 2025

    Alberta expands family justice strategy to more municipalities

    The Alberta government is expanding its family justice strategy — which aims to give Albertans a more streamlined and consistent process to access family justice services — to more municipalities in the province.

  • July 24, 2025

    Divorce, second time around — it can hit your clients twice as hard

    Everyone knows that marriages don’t always last. But it’s not just first marriages that struggle to survive — many second and third marriages end in divorce as well. According to Statistics Canada’s most recent General Social Survey (2017), more than one-quarter of Canadians aged 35-64 were on their second or subsequent marriage — but only about half of those couples were still together a decade later.

  • July 23, 2025

    The Friendly Bar Series, No. 6: The weight we carry — On intimacy, identity and family law practice

    Since launching this series, many lawyers have reached out, some in DMs, others at conferences or after court, to share the quiet burdens they carry. The words of one lawyer, a senior member of the Friendly Family Bar who wished to remain anonymous, landed squarely in the centre of my chest. They shared the following reflections:

  • July 23, 2025

    Harper Grey welcomes Jimmy Peterson

    Harper Grey has added a new associate, Jimmy Peterson, to its health and insurance law groups.

  • July 23, 2025

    Nunavut Indigenous still hampered by ‘Eurocentric’ family law: lawyer

    Indigenous people caught in Nunavut’s family law system continue to face child welfare challenges due to a conflict between their need for community-based solutions and the justice system’s “westernized” notions of what constitutes family. So says Ontario lawyer Andrea Clarke, who recently hosted an online lecture for the Law Society of Nunavut.

  • July 22, 2025

    Federal Court affirms Ottawa can temporarily bar sex offenders from sponsoring immigrants

    The Federal Court has affirmed that Ottawa acted within its scope of authority, under the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act (IRPA), when it issued a temporary regulatory ban on immigration sponsorship applications from Canadians or permanent residents convicted of sex crimes.

  • July 22, 2025

    Ontario court clarifies parental consent rules under child abduction convention

    Ontario’s top court has clarified what it means for a parent to “consent” or “acquiesce” to a child’s retention in a foreign country under an international convention on child abduction that has been incorporated into provincial family law.

  • July 22, 2025

    Finality over fairness: A cautionary tale in will drafting, limitation periods

    The Ontario Superior Court’s decision in Tessaro v. Gora, 2025 ONSC 198 quietly answered a long-standing question among estate planners: what happens when a decades-old drafting error is unexpectedly discovered? In answering this question, Justice Fred Myers not only clarified the legal consequences of such an error but also reiterated the importance of diligent drafting in estate planning.

  • July 21, 2025

    B.C. Court of Appeal upholds executor removal despite procedural challenge

    The British Columbia Court of Appeal has largely upheld a lower court’s decision to remove an executor from his mother’s estate, rejecting his claim that property transfers to himself and his brother were legitimate distributions rather than improper self-dealing.

  • July 21, 2025

    Navigating AI in legal practice: Responsibilities, risks and realities, part three

    So far in this series of articles, we’ve covered some of the risks that arise when lawyers use AI. These include more general justice and institution-wide concerns like bias, as well as more specific fears about how AI-generated “hallucinations” in client documents and court-filed materials can impede justice.