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Practice Areas / Family Law / ...

Divorce

Divorce is only required if you have been legally married (either in Canada or another country), i.e. your have undergone a marriage ceremony with another person led by someone who has the legal power to marry people, such as a judge, justice of the peace, or religious official.  Married couples are considered spouses for all legal purposes including property division and inheritance.

A divorce is a court order that ends a marriage.  The main legal reason to get divorced is so that either of you can marry again.

Types of Divorce

 

Contested Divorce: In a Contested Divorce spouses do not agree. Their disagreements can be about the Divorce itself, or about the terms of the Divorce. (Terms such as: custody, access, support and property/debt division.) In a contested Divorce lawyers should be retained and the courts must intervene.


Uncontested Divorce: In an Uncontested Divorce both spouses do agree and have signed a separation agreement to resolve all issues surrounding their Divorce. Issues such as: custody, access, support, property/debt division etc. Also, both parties want to proceed with ending their relationship and agree to the Divorce itself.  In most cases Uncontested Divorces proceed faster and are much less stressful and costly then Contested Divorce.

Grounds for Divorce

You can only get a divorce if there has been a breakdown of the marriage and reasonable arrangements have been made for the support of any children of the marriage.

Breakdown of a marriage is established only if:

    1. the spouses have lived separate and apart for at least one year immediately preceding the determination of the divorce proceeding and were living separate and apart at the commencement of the proceeding; or 
    2. one of the spouses has committed adultery, or
    3. one of the spouses treated the other spouse with physical or mental cruelty of such a kind as to render intolerable the continued cohabitation of the spouses.

Division of Property

You do not need to apply for a divorce in order to deal with issues such as property, support and parenting plans. You can do this in a separation agreement or court order without getting divorced.