Although I’m not a family law lawyer per se, I often get asked the question: “How does emancipation work in the context of child support obligations?”. I think the better way of asking this question is: “How can I end my child support obligations?”. You see, I’ve researched Ontario and Federal laws and court cases and the term “emancipation” just doesn’t seem to appear anywhere. The term ‘emancipation’ is more of an American term and one which Ontario family law lawyers may not be familiar with it.
If you’d like to know more about ending child support, you should basically be asking for two things on Dynamic Lawyers: (1) what does the law say about how to end child support and (2) what procedural steps need to be taken to go about ending child support?
With respect to the first question, the answer is based on which laws (i.e. statutes, regulations, and cases, etc.) apply to your situation and those depend on where you live. If you live in Toronto or Ottawa, for example, you should go to Dynamic Lawyers and make a post (it’s 100% FREE and Anonymous) and have local family law lawyers respond to your inquiry. Once the Toronto or Ottawa family law lawyer has been retained and understand your situation, he or she can explain to you what the law says about ending child support (a.k.a. being emancipated from child support).
In terms of answering the second question, the proper procedure (although I haven’t done it myself) in Ontario appears to be to bring a motion to ask the court to vary a court order previously made requiring you to pay child support. This assumes that there was a court order requiring you to pay child support. You or your lawyer would do things like prepare the motion materials, serve them on the other parties, and file them with the court; thereafter, the parties would attend a case conference, then a settlement conference, then a trial scheduling conference, and then finally go to trial to argue the motion. For each of the conferences, you’ll need to prepare, serve, and file briefs and financial statements. Before trial, you’ll also need to prepare a trial brief. All of this procedural stuff and documentation takes a lot of time to prepare, review, serve, and file. While you can save money by doing it yourself (the court forms are online and so too are the Family Law Rules and the Family Law Act), it’ll take up a lot of your time and you might end up being penalized finally in costs for failing to do something.
Finally, this whole process could take many months, if not years. I know it sounds discouraging, but that’s the reality of bringing a motion to vary a court order requiring child support payments.
The bottom line is that you should definitely know if you have a good substantive case in law before you set out procedurally to bring the motion (and spend thousands on lawyers and put yourself at risk of losing thousands in legal costs for the other side if you lose!). Go to Dynamic Lawyers and make a post to get free quotes from Toronto and Ottawa lawyers!
Related posts:
- Child/Spousal Support Obligations + Bankruptcy = ? Please note that the information provided herein is not legal...
- Toronto Family Law Lawyer (Part 2): Limitations on Child Support Obligations in Ontario Please note that the information provided herein is not legal...
- Toronto Family Law Lawyer (Part 4): Who is a Parent for child support purposes? Please note that the information provided herein is not legal...
- Child Support Calculators (more)… Please note that the information provided herein is not legal...
- Toronto Family Law Lawyer (Part 1): Child Support Obligations in Ontario Please note that the information provided herein is not legal...
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June 20th, 2009 at 9:42 pm
Emancipation event describes the time when you leave the nest and become an adult. Either by joining the military, get married, go off to college (except in some states) turn 18 and get a job (unless you have a disability) In Florida it’s age 19. This means in essence that you are competant enought to vote on complex issues but if you go back and read on pg 2 Calculating CHild Support in Texas, my comments in the second post demonstrate how the Department with the aid of the COurt can steal away your constitutional right to defend, prosecute or not your inherent right to pursue your own litigation. It happens by operation of law, which simply means automatically. However, they won’t tell you this as punishment for a debt and throwing one into debto’rs prison seems to be the only thing on their minds these days. Learn how to stand up and exercise your constitutional rights by joining a Fathr’s rights gropu in your area.
Rockstar said it…