Common family law issues
Parenting issues
Parents have to decide issues about their children like:
- where they will live
- decision-making responsibility or who will make major decisions about their health, education, and religion
- parenting time or how much time they will spend with each parent
Decision-making responsibility and parenting time used to be called custody and access.
Child support
In most cases, parents have to financially support their children until they turn 18 and sometimes longer. Child support is money that one parent usually pays to the other parent who has the child living with them most of the time.
Child support is usually made up of a basic monthly amount, also called a table amount, and an amount for other expenses, called special or extraordinary expenses.
Table amount
The table amount is based on the gross annual income of the payor parent and the number of children they have to support. Gross annual income is the total income a person earns in the year before subtracting taxes and other deductions. It is usually the amount on line 150 on your income tax return.
To find out what a parent in Ontario has to pay in child support, visit justice.gc.ca/eng/fl-df and click on “Child Support”, then click on “2017 Child Support Table Look-up”. Enter the annual gross income of the payor parent, the number of children, and select “Ontario” for province of residence.
Special or extraordinary expenses
Parents may also have to share other expenses like:
- child-care fees
- medical and dental insurance premiums and expenses
- extracurricular activities
Property division
When a married couple separates, they usually share the increase in their money or property that happened during the marriage. They also have an equal right to continue to live in the home they were living in together. It does not matter which partner owns or rents the home.
These rules do not apply to common-law couples. If a common-law couple separates, each partner usually keeps their own money and property. In most cases, they only divide what they own together.
A common-law partner may be able to claim a share of the other partner’s money or property, but this is not an automatic right.
Spousal support
Spousal support is money paid by one partner to the other after they separate or divorce. It is not an automatic right. A partner might have the legal right to support if they were:
- married,
- a common-law partner for at least 3 years, or
- in a relationship for some period of time and had a child together.
The Spousal Support Advisory Guidelines (SSAGs) are often used by lawyers and judges to help decide spousal support.
There is also a spousal support calculator at mysupportcalculator.ca.
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