I love to the point case law.
This one demonstrates the difference that can be made to a case when someone switches from a lawyer that just wants to fight … to one who is willing to tell their client to stop their nonsense and fighting.
This is a LONG bitter fight with the Mom seemingly acting as a gate keeper and restricting access. Kids in Therapy over the conflict. One case conference judge said he suspect it was moms fault but wasn’t sure.
Things went downhill … until another judge weighed in January :
“-12. In the end, I concluded that a lack of cooperation [by the mother] made it impossible to create a safe environment for the children through the case management process. I also concluded that given the significant ongoing psychological injury to the children, a trial was necessary. ... [A] trial date of April 18 or at the latest April 19 was secured with the consent of counsel.”
Mom got new counsel. Then this endorsement happened
“Justice Bondy issued a Case Management Endorsement following an April 29, 2022 conference. He reluctantly granted mother’s request to adjourn the trial set for June 27, 2022, stating that Mr. Howie advised of mother’s willingness to expand children’s parenting time with father noting, “I found what appears to be an abrupt and significant change in the applicant’s conduct, possibly related to or change in legal representation, tended to reduce the level of urgency.” A new trial date was set: November 21, 2022 for ten days.”
“By Justice Bondy’s Combined Pretrial and Settlement Conference Notes and Endorsement of May 26, 2022, the court ordered 50/50 parenting time during the summer. On consent, said equal parenting time continues.”
I think we can read between the lines on what happened when Mom got some good and objective counsel.
At trial Mom admitted that her initial views “kids should not be compelled to visit the other parent” were wrong and took ownership of her missteps in the past.
There were concerns with her disclosure though. She was ordered to produce texts between her and the children and she refused. At trial she admits that she was afraid of the consequences of those texts should they come to trial.
Judge was impressed with her taking responsibility for past misdeeds but she never the less still has some outstanding credibility issues.
But Dad had his own issues. He spent a lot of time saying bad things about mom in his materials. Never a good idea.
There was also a therapist involved that was found to be biased in favour of Dad.
However there was a clinical accessor as well that essentially called out the therapist as taking on the inappropriate roll of advocate instead of therapist. Never the less the clinical accessor had suggested 50/50.
This ended up in trial because dad became unreasonable … he wanted a 90 day cessation to moms access to make up time, police enforcement, more than 50/50, etc etc
He might have gotten something close to that if Mom had not done a 180 earlier in the year.
The trial ended at 50/50, joint decision making, and Dad having to pay $100,000 in costs to mom.
This is a tragic and unnecessary outcome … but predictable. It should never have gone to trial.
Dad was no doubt carrying bitterness for the alienation … but couldn’t let go and pivot and recognize the colossal effort mom made to fix things on her end.
They were both responsible for the conflict, but Dad failed to follow Mom’s pivot; and thus kept them in conflict - to his detriment.
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