Court ruling means divorced dads could face hefty child-support payments
The National Post ( one of Canada's 2 national newspapers), Janice Tibbetts, CanWest News Service, Monday, July 31, 2006
OTTAWA - The Supreme Court of Canada sent a warning to divorced parents on Monday that they better come clean when their income goes up or they could be forced to pay retroactive child support unless they can convince a judge that they had a good reason for non-disclosure.
The unanimous decision will mean a huge change for the way the child support business is conducted in Canada, predicted lawyer Deidre Smith, who represented four Alberta fathers challenging court orders to pay retroactive support.
Its going to change substantially how payors view their responsibilities, Smith said.
You dont wait until youre asked.
Smith said she will advise all her clients to own up annually, so that they wont be hit with retroactive bills.
She also called on the federal government to rewrite the 1997 federal child support guidelines, to make it easier for paying parents - usually fathers - to keep up to date automatically instead of having to go to court.
The current guidelines, which fix payments to a grid based on the paying parents income, only require income disclosure when requested by the recipient parent, and then courts can order an adjustment based on the information.
Until now, orders to make retroactive payments have been the exception rather than the rule.
The Supreme Court stopped short of ordering a duty to disclose salary changes automatically, but the judges signalled that paying parents should do so as a matter of course because children of divorce have a right to a share of an income hike.
Parents have an obligation to support their children in a manner commensurate with their income and this obligation and the childrens right to support exists independently of any statute or court order, wrote Justice Michel Bastarache.
While child support orders should provide payor parents with the benefit of predictability, and a degree of certainty in managing their affairs, such an order does not absolve the payor parent - or the recipient parent - of the responsibility of continually ensuring that the children are receiving an appropriate amount of support.
The ruling sets out guidelines on when retroactive payments may be ordered, taking into account such factors as the degree of hardship for the paying parent.
Smith predicted the ruling could affect hundreds of thousands of families.
The ruling is a victory for two Alberta fathers, identified in court documents as D.B.S. and T.A.R.
Two other fathers - Daryl Henry and Kenneth Hiemstra, were ordered to pay $129,000 between them.
Henry was hit with the biggest retroactive bill of $107,000. The Calgary father paid modest child support relative to his income, which reached a high of almost $200,000 in 2000, according to his ex-wifes written court submission.
Meanwhile, she said she struggled financially for a decade - at one point she had her phone cut off for not paying her bill - before she finally decided to pursue her ex-husband for Read More ..pport.
In awarding her a lump sum of $100,000, the courts said she delayed taking action earlier because she couldnt afford the legal fees and her ex-husband threatened to make a court battle expensive and try to get custody of the children.
At the time, he was paying less than half of the child support guidelines amount of $2,425, based on his income in 2000. Their separation occurred before the guidelines took effect.
The Alberta Court of Appeal ruled in favour of all four mothers in February 2005, concluding that children of divorce should no longer shoulder the burden of judges traditionally leniency toward people who pay child support.
CanWest News Service 2006
Ontario's child financial support collection agency has big problems
Ontario's Family Responsibility Office has many problems
Quote from Ontario Government Ombudsman -"an equal opportunity error-prone program,."'
Support recipients not getting their money.
Men who've been meeting their court-ordered obligations have trouble getting the FRO to stop taking payments when it's supposed to. Read More ..
Pilloried, broke, alone
March 25, 2000
Divorced fathers get a bad rap for not supporting their children. The truth is, many can't. And, tragically, some are driven to desperate measures, including suicide.
In his suicide note, Jim, the father of four children, protests that "not all fathers are deadbeats." Jim hanged himself because he couldn't see any alternative. Even now, his children are unaware of the circumstances of their father's death. Meeno Meijer, National Post George Roulier is fighting to regain money wrongfully taken from his wages by the Ontario child-support collection agency. Chris Bolin, National Post Alan Heinz, a Toronto firefighter, has gone bankrupt fighting for the return of his daughter, 3, from Germany. No one will help him, but German authorities are trying to collect child support from him.
Whenever fathers and divorce are discussed, one image dominates: the 'deadbeat dad,' the schmuck who'd rather drive a sports car than support his kids. Because I write about family matters, I'm regularly inundated with phone calls, faxes, letters and e-mail from divorced men. It's not news that divorced individuals have little good to say about their ex-spouses. What I'm interested in is whether the system assists people during this difficult time in their lives, or compounds their misery. From the aircraft engineer in British Columbia, to the postal worker on the prairies, to the fire fighter in Toronto, divorced fathers' stories are of a piece: Though society stereotypes these men relentlessly, most divorced dads pay their child support. Among those who don't, a small percentage wilfully refuse to (the villains you always hear about).
What you haven't been told is that the other men in arrears are too impoverished to pay, have been ordered to pay unreasonable amounts, have been paying for unreasonable lengths of time, or are the victims of bureaucratic foul-ups. Read More ..
Non-dad on hook for support
Edmonton and Calgary Sun
Feb 5, 2005
EDMONTON -- An Edmonton judge has decided a divorced dad has to make child support payments, even though the child isn't his. Justin Sumner had an on-again-off-again relationship with the woman he eventually married, Dawn Sumner.
She already had a child from a previous relationship with a man named Rob Duncan, and as she and Justin broke up and reunited, Dawn was sexually involved with both men.
When she found she was pregnant, she called Justin, who recognized there was a possibility that Duncan was the father, but later concluded he was the dad.
Father Committeed Suicide after calling Family Responsibility Office
Andrew T. Renouf committed suicide on or about October 17, 1995 because he had 100% of his wages taken by the Family Responsibility Office, a child support collection agency of the Government of Ontario, Canada.
He asked for assistance for food and shelter from the welfare office and was refused because he had a job, even though all of his wages were taken by the Family Responsibility Office.
Andy was a loving father that hadn't seen his daughter in 4 years.
A memorial service was held in October, 1998, for Andy in front of the Family Responsibility Office at 1201 Wilson Avenue, West Tower, Toronto, Ontario, Canada. This is in the Ministry of Transportation grounds in the Keele St. & Hwy 401 area. All members of the Ontario Legislature were invited by personal letter faxed to their offices. Not one turned up. The Director of the Family Responsibility Office and his entire staff were invited to the brief service. The Director refused and wouldn't let the staff attend the service although it was scheduled for lunch time. There was a peaceful demonstration by followed by a very touching service by The Reverend Alan Stewart. The text of the service will soon be able to be read below.
The service made the TV evening news.
It was Andy's last wish that his story be told to all. YOU CAN READ HIS SUICIDE NOTE
Auditor General of Ontario
Disasterous Report on the Family Reponsibility Office FRO 2010
80% of Telephone calls don't get answered
Payers and recipients do not have direct access to their assigned enforcement services officer
"There is only limited access to enforcement staff because many calls to the Office do not get through or are terminated before they can be answered."
"The Office is reviewing and working on only about 20% to 25% of its total cases in any given year."
"At the end of our audit in April 2010, there were approximately 91,000 bring-forward notes outstanding, each of which is supposed to trigger specific action on a case within one month. The status of almost one-third of the outstanding bring-forward notes was "open," indicating either that the notes had been read but not acted upon, or that they had not been read at all, meaning that the underlying nature and urgency of the issues that led to these notes in the first place was not known. In addition, many of the notes were between one and two years old."
"For ongoing cases, the Office took almost four months from the time the case went into arrears before taking its first enforcement action. For newly registered cases that went straight into arrears, the delay was seven months from the time the court order was issued."
Ontario agency admits to overbilling on child support payments
The Ottawa Citizen
January 14, 2012
TORONTO - Ontario's controversial Family Responsibility Office has been overbilling 1,700 parents, mostly fathers, for as long as 13 years, the province admitted Friday.
The 1,700 parents were overbilled by an average $75 each month, after the agency wrongly applied a cost of living adjustment that was eliminated in 1997.
Those who were overpaid will not be forced to give the money back.
Instead, taxpayers will foot the $5.3 million bill for the agency's mistake.
"This error's been found and it's being corrected," said Liberal cabinet minister John Milloy. "We're going to be reaching out to those individuals (who were overbilled) and talking to them about their situation, formally alerting them."
The Family Responsibility Office, or FRO, is responsible for ensuring court-ordered child support payments are made. Read More .. than 97 per cent of all payers overseen by the office are male.
Milloy said the agency discovered the problem at some point in 2011. No one will be fired for the mistakes, he added.
"I see this as something very serious," he said in an interview. "I'm not trying to minimize it, but … there's been lots of action taken to reform FRO, to update computer systems, to update customer relations and it's on a much firmer footing."
The billing mistake is only the latest controversy to engulf FRO.
"Canada's national newspaper for professional women"
The Family Responsibility Office Under Scrutiny
On June 9, 2005 the McGuinty government announced the passage of Bill 155, legislation that promised to increase enforcement, improve fairness and enhance efficiency at the Family Responsibility Office (FRO).
However, the legislation did not address the problem of accountability and, as things now stand, the FRO is a threat to every Canadian affected by a government regulated support and custody arrangement system. Think of George Orwell's 1984 and you'll have a good picture of how issues are handled at the FRO.
They have legal power to extort money from Canadians, but are not responsible or accountable for their actions.
Last year an FRO staff member decided not to wait for a court date to review the financial status of an out-of-work truck driver and took it upon themselves to suspend his license because he was, understandably, behind on his payments, having lost his job earlier in the year. Although he was looking for work, the FRO cut off the only way he knew of to earn a living. His suicide note explained how he'd lost all hope. Is this what we want FRO to be doing? Read More ..