I saw a show (20-20? Nightline?) that addressed these type of stories, and I was blown away how the courts could impose those kinds of rulings.
I am NOT condoning it, but I can see how when you mix up money, sex/love/jealousy, and the feeling of being powerless against an unfair judicial system, combine it with some booze and a couple of guns, you have a recipie for disaster, as one judge in Reno found out the hard way a couple of years back…
That I can’t remember. It wasn’t a trivial amount of time but not a huge amount either. I’m thinking it was a couple years. I seem to remember the sticking point being that he moved in wayyyyy to quickly after the child was born and the mother refusing to name the father. His brother, being particularly paranoid, thought the whole thing was planned. I think that is extreme…but you never know.
FYI - the family had some money - no Bill Gates’es but known through the area as having some money. There was probably some ‘this child/woman need some money…he has it so it won’t hurt him to pay some CS…’ going on in the court.
I met/became friends with a couple lawyers that said they could have gotten him off but can’t remember much about why/how.
Also, of course, I only heard one side.
Previously, the father (or noncustodial) would deduct support from his income, and pay it to the mother. The mother would declare it on her income. As a single mother, 9 times out of 10 she had less income than the guy even when the support was added. So instead of the guy paying 42% tax on his last dollar and giving her 58 cents, he gives her a dollar and she pays tax of, say 28 cents on it for being in a much lower bracket. It’s a transfer or “income splitting”.
Escape tax on any income? Hey, get real, this is Canada… You gotta be an ex-prime minister taking “lobbying payments” in a plain brown envelope to get a deal on taxes.
“Bitchy Lawyer” probably also made the same tax bracket as daddy, and so paid the 45% or more top income tax bracket. She resented getting $1.00 and only having a 55-cent benefit. So as a result, she screwed most other single moms in Canada. After all, the courts aren’t that stupid. The amount paid is calculated after taxes now, but net it’s about the same. You can find the tables on-line. (TLTG -too lazy to google…) It’s just that when the high-income parent pays taxes first, the resulting pot is smaller.
I see your point now. But from the perspective of the other taxpayers, weren’t they in total paying less under the old system? I’m not so much concerned with what’s fair to him and to her, but from the perspective that the tax code shouldn’t create an incentive for parents to divorce.
Married - They were taxed at max 42% on $100k.
Divorced - old system
He was taxed at max 42% on $60k
She was taxed at max 28% on 40k
Divorced - new system
He was taxed at max 42% on $80k
She was taxed at max $28% on $20k
I agree that support calculations should take into account who pays what taxes and (in the US at least, not sure how Canada does this) who will claim the kid and get the deduction. But I can’t get behind a “divorce bonus” for people supporting kids. Although I guess if taxes have a marriage penalty, like they sometimes do in the US, it might be hard to undo.
There have been a number of cases in NSW where flatmates have been categorised into a de facto situation, even where there’s no pooling of bank accounts and separate bedrooms are maintained.
One of the requirements is “common expenses”, so if you split the water, phone and power bills you’re liable to be married - and for these purposes there’s no obligation that you have to be of different genders.
You can attempt to prove that you’re not a de facto couple, but this is typically extremely hard to do.
Generally the only time that it becomes an issue, however, is for common property disputes (which doesn’t happen very often with flatmates - at least, not to the point that it goes to court) or for social security benefits. A great-aunt of mine knew two women - both old-age pensioners - who were quite surprised to receive a letter from the government telling them that they were now married.
As a kiwi living in the US, I get the impression, with no real data to prove it, that unmarried couples living together long term is more common in New Zealand than in the US. I suspect that health insurance has a part to play in that.
That’s interesting - my husband’s grandfather has a female roommate in his house (also a pensioner - they’re basically keeping each other company) - not to be too venal, but I have a few question marks in my head about what is going to happen to his grandfather’s estate when he dies, if she’s still living there. She isn’t his girlfriend or common-law spouse, and doesn’t seem like the type to go after the bucks, but I think the courts might take her side if she got an idea in her head.
ETA: Saw the “two women” part too late - anyway, my post still stands. 
Well, it was more in the vein of “can you believe what the government will do to cut our pensions?” outrage than concern about inheritance or moral quandries, but it had much the same effect.
I honestly don’t know what the legal situation would have been with inheritance. I believe that they were married for the purposes of Centrelink, but I that’s a commonwealth agency and may not have carried weight at a state level for an inheritance question.
It’s not really tricky at all. The OP’s question raises two different issues:
When an unmarried couple breaks up, does either one have a right to support from the other?
When an unmarried couple breaks up, does either one have a right to a division of property acquired during the relationship?
The answers to these two questions depend on the law of the province where the unmarried couple lives. Last time I checked, all of the provinces had a statutory right to support, based on need tied to to the relationship in some way. So the answer to question 1 in Canada would, in general, be “yes, there is a right to support, similar to that of a married couple breaking up.”
For question number 2, in eight of the ten provinces, there is no statutory right to a division of property. In most of those provinces, there can be a claim under the law of trusts, which gives a similar result to that of a married couple breaking up. Two provinces, Manitoba and Saskatchewan, have enacted statutory provisions that give unmarried couples the same rights to property division as married couples.
So overall, the legal rules are pretty straightforward. When an unmarried couple breaks up, a trip to a lawyer specialising in family law in their jurisdiction will give them a pretty good idea of their respective rights and obligations.
The Marriage Acts have nothing to do with claims for support or property division. When a married couple breaks up, their property rights are governed by the family law act of the province. Their support claims may initially be governed by provincial family law, until divorce proceedings begin, at which point support is governed by the Divorce Act.
In some cases, when an unmarried couple breaks up, their property rights are also governed by the family law act, as discussed above. In most cases, their support obligations will also be governed by that law.
Only in the case of a divorce. When a married couple breaks up, they often begin their claims under provincial family laws. Support in such cases is governed by provincial laws regulating support. Those provincial laws may reach a similar result as under the federal guidelines, but it’s still done under provincial law - the federal Parliament does not have jurisdiction at that stage. Only if they move on to a divorce would the federal guidelines apply.
If you’re referring to the Supreme Court decision in Thibaudeau v. Canada, Ms. Thibaudeau was unsuccessful in her court case. The SCC by a majority held that the provision permitting the non-custodial spouse to deduct the support payments was consistent with the Charter, so she continued to have to pay tax on her ex-husband’s support payments.
Subsequently, Parliament reviewed the matter and concluded that allowing the non-custodial spouse to deduct the payments was not good tax policy, and changed the law so that the non-custodial spouse is no longer entitled to deduct the child support payments. so if you want to blame someone, you should blame Parliament, which made the change, not the unsuccessful litigant.
It’s not just property that is used by the family. In almost all of the provincial regimes, all property acquired by either spouse after the marriage is part of the pool of family property, even if it’s entirely work-related, such as a share in a business. The parties to the marriage can agree to opt out of these provisions by pre-nuptial agreements, but it’s not limited in the way you suggest.
In my opinion, Harriet the Spry is correct, when you take into account that in Canada, couples can’t file jointly. They file separately. Income is taxed in the hands of the spouse who earned it, at whatever rate applied. And, transfers between married spouses for child care don’t affect the taxes paid.
So, as a matter of tax policy, if a married couple who are living together can’t split their income by transfers for child support, why should a divorced couple be able to do that, and get an overall lower rate than the married couple? That was the point of tax policy which convinced the federal government to change the law, so that married and divorced couples would be taxed equally; not some vague “political correctness” that md2000 is going on about.
Is there a reason you keep referring to the litigant as “bitchy”, other than to make a sexist ad hominem attack (or should that be ad feminem? 
) on someone whose opinions you disagree with? It doesn’t do much to advance the discussion, in my opinion.
It varies considerably from province to province. Saskatchewan and Manitoba have gone the farthest to treat married couples and unmarried couples in the same way, particularly in the area of family property. Most of the provinces do not have statutory provisions permitting property division for non-married couples, but as mentioned earlier, the common law of trusts usually reaches a similar result. There’s also other issues, such as inheritance rights, where there is considerable variance among the provinces.
As always, none of this is intended as legal advice, but simply to comment in a general way on a matter of public interest and discussion. If someone needs advice on this type of situation, they should speak to a lawyer knowledgeable in the law of their jurisdiction.
Since issues of spousal and child support are matters akin to equitable rights, in Canada these types of cases do not go to juries for a decision, but to a judge sitting alone.
Thank you to people who know more than me about Canadian family law. As you can see, no answer is simple. Consult a lawyer. Now that you mention it, yes, I do recall reading now that most provinces do not do the 50-50 thing with common-law property. Never having had to experience the processes first hand, my knowledge is based mostly on casual reading. Thanks.
the 50-50 split with assets acquired during marriage is logical. It beats the destructive argument over who contributed what to the marriage and the success. Would Dick become the successful millionaire corporate executive if he had to go home and look after the kids, instead of leaving that to Jane while he put in 18-hour days at the office? The Canadian case that precipitated the law was a woman who worked her husband’s farm for decades but got nothing when they split; not even the equivalent of back wages.
Why “bitchy”? Personal guess, based on the circumstances. 2 lawyers, probably (guessing) good incomes. So what’s the benefit of the legal fight, other than to stick it to the ex? Unless she got some special deal from a partner in the firm, odds are the fight cost a lot more than any benefit she was likely to see. When a man or a woman acts like that due to an unfinished domestic dispute, some gender-specific adjectives seem appropriate; neither gender has a monopoly on vindictiveness and domestic disputes seem to bring out the interesting parts of people’s character. Not knowing the litigants, this is an educated guess. Who knows, maybe she took her ex to court for high principles and the greater good. Net result is still - less money for the kids usually.
Why should a separated couple income-split while a married couple can’t? Well, for starters they are maintaining one more household than a married couple, usually. That detail escaped parliament.
Rough rule of thumb, someone making $40K to $50K in Canada pays about 1/4 in taxes. For a couple each making $40K, their $80K gives $60K take-home. An apartment for $1500/month means an expense of $18,000; leaving $42K for other expenses. Two such apartments leaves $26K or about $13,000 each. I guess daddy’s going to live in a smaller apartment and everyone’s going to scrimp. Certainly the kid won’t live in a house that costs $2,500/month mortgage, which might have been the case if the couple stayed together.
What was the comedian who said, “marriage is grand, divorce is about 50 grand.” Short pause… “but it was worth it.”