Are you looking for an Ottawa divorce lawyer? You have come to the right place. Read this story that our divorce lawyer in Ottawa wrote. It will teach you more about separation and divorce.

A divorce lawyer can help with a separation agreement, getting a court order, or marriage contractors. Divorce lawyers can also work on support and property legal issues. Further down in the article, we wrote about more family law matters that a lawyer can assist with.

The value of the legal profession is questionable. A surgeon will open you up, fix you, and close you. What will a lawyer do for you? Throw a lot of strange languages your way and take your money?

Actually, that’s how many lawyers feel about interior decorators. When Dick the Butcher said in Shakespeare’s Henry VI, “The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers,” he definitely meant it. Well, he was a bad guy, what do you expect?

High-Profiles Divorces In Ottawa

One of the most notable was that of former Conservative MP Pierre Poilievre and his wife Anaida Galindo, who filed for divorce in 2019 after 11 years of marriage. Their separation was covered extensively in the Canadian media, which is not surprising considering Poilievre’s prominent position in Parliament as a leading figure in the Conservative Party.

Despite the media attention, the couple managed to keep the details of their divorce relatively private, and there was no major scandal or controversy surrounding their separation.

Another high-profile divorce that made headlines in Ottawa was that of the former mayor of Ottawa, Larry O’Brien, and his wife Colleen McBride. The couple filed for divorce in 2015 after 32 years of marriage, and their separation was widely covered in the local media.

O’Brien served as the mayor of Ottawa from 2006 to 2010 and was a prominent figure in the city’s political and business communities. The couple’s divorce was particularly acrimonious, involving allegations of infidelity and financial impropriety that were widely reported in the media. According to reports, the divorce was eventually settled out of court with O’Brien reportedly paying McBride a significant sum of money.

Separation made headlines

Another well-known divorce in Ottawa was that of former Ottawa Senators hockey player Mike Fisher and country music star Carrie Underwood. The couple filed for divorce in 2015 after four years of marriage, and their separation made headlines in the Canadian and international media.

Fisher was a beloved figure in the Ottawa community, having played for the Senators for many years, while Underwood was a multi-platinum recording artist and one of the biggest stars in country music. The couple’s divorce was relatively amicable compared to other high-profile divorces, and they released a joint statement to the media stating that they would remain friends and co-parent their son.

Statistics Canada and divorces

Statistics show that divorce is not uncommon in Canada. According to a report by Statistics Canada, the divorce rate in the country was 2.5 per 1,000 people in 2019. In Ontario, the province where Ottawa is located, the divorce rate was slightly higher at 2.6 per 1,000 people. These rates have been relatively stable over the past decade, with a slight decrease from 2010 to 2014 and a slight increase from 2014 to 2019.

Other high-profile divorces that made the news in Ottawa over the years include the separation of former Ottawa Senators player Alexandre Daigle and his wife and the divorce of former Ottawa mayor Jim Watson and his partner. In both cases, the divorces were widely covered in the local media and attracted a great deal of public interest. However, like many high-profile divorces, the details of these separations were kept largely private, and there were no major scandals or controversies surrounding the cases.

Child And Spousal Support

In a perfect world, lawyers need not exist. And yet, our world is so obviously not perfect. Forget your own divorce. Think ancient Greeks. Jason and Medea. I mean, he cheated on her and she killed his children and served them as a meal. All to make her husband regret cheating.

We don’t do so these days. People are meant to be civilized. We go get a lawyer. Except by the time the lawyers are done, anyone who remains standing in the wreckage doesn’t just regret having cheated. They regret having been born.

Support And Property In Ontario

If you think you can navigate the law on your own, think again. Laws have been written by lawyers. Do you really believe that people who have dropped close to 100 K on the right to put LL.B. after their name, will give you a chance to keep your money from them?

True, we no longer argue in Latin. But what about terms like “constructive trust”? Or the “doctrine of equitable estoppel”? (That one, by the way, simply means, “Stop being unfair!”). If things were simple, you would not be reading this article right now.

You would have already agreed on custody and access, figured out the child and spousal support, and been on your way to Vegas to celebrate your newfound freedom.

What makes things even worse, is that many laws simply cannot be figured out by thinking logically.

Do you know, for example, that when you pay child support, it is calculated based on your full salary, before taxes? Yet it is deducted from your income after you pay taxes.

Ottawa Divorce Lawyer Help

The person who receives support, adds it to their actual income, but will not be paying tax on it. Why? You could argue all sorts of things, but the real answer, I gather, is that the group receiving support had better lawyers. (This is very seriously simplified, by the way. The reality is even more complex).

Consider a hypothetical. Sage and Thyme were a couple for five years. They lived in a condo that belonged to Sage. Obviously, Thyme lived in the condo rent-free. They had a plan. They were going to fix up the condo, sell it, buy a house with the proceeds, and live in the house together.

Sage happened to be exceptionally handy. It was Sage who did all the repair work on the condo, the work that would have otherwise set the couple back 40 to 50 K.

Divorce Lawyers In Ottawa

But Sage and Thyme broke up. Right after the spiffed-up condo had been sold. Sage, you see, did not bother seeing a lawyer on the break-up. Had Sage gone, Sage would have found out that the condo was the matrimonial home for the couple.

As such, they were both entitled to the proceeds of the sale. Sage was supposed to have gotten half of what the condo fetched. But didn’t. And yet, there is all this work that Sage had put into the condo.

So does Sage just write the whole experience off? Easy come, easy go? Better luck next time. Give this little problem a second thought, before you pass on the answer in the next paragraph.

The answer is that Sage is supposed to be compensated for the work on the condo. The relevant doctrine is, “unjust enrichment.” The courts have built a huge body of cases explaining just how this concept works.

When Sage and Thyme argue about the issue between themselves, Thyme will no doubt say “lived rent-free,” “I never asked you to renovate, you offered,” and “Oh, you are so petty, I was right to have left you.”

Funny, but lawyers neither make these arguments nor are particularly receptive to them. So Sage is busy dialling for a lawyer even as we speak. But Thyme had made a mistake too. Guess?

The Divorce Legal Process

Thyme’s mistake is called “not writing a cohabitation agreement.” When couples embark on their pink-glossed starry-eyed relationship is precisely the time to set out what will happen when it all goes “plop.” Your lawyer does not see your partner as “a wonderful person who lights up the room.”

The lawyer thinks in terms of “matrimonial property,” “release of obligations,” and “contracting out of the legislative provisions.”

Not just because your lawyer is a dry unromantic thing-on-a-stick, but because that lawyer had spent many years being drilled in thinking about contingencies and assuming the worst possible scenario.

When you hooked up, did you think it was going to end with the love of your life smashing a jar of pickles in the middle of your Oriental rug and slamming out? Bet your lawyer did.

Lawyer In Ottawa

And the children. Oh, Lord, the children. Do you have any idea how many problems the little people generate by the very fact of their existence in the midst of a divorce? You could not agree with the kids’ other parents when you two still lived together and supposedly loved each other.

Do you really think you can agree on the children’s best interests, the quantum of expenses in excess of table-amount child support, access schedule, etc? Maybe you can, indeed.

If so, I salute you and raise my glass of rosé to a life well-lived. But if you can’t … what can I say? Even if they are parasites on the body of society – lawyers earn their keep. If they didn’t, they’d never pay off their school loans.

Think of how many headaches your divorce has given you so far. If you hire a lawyer, there’s only one headache you’ll have left – how to pay them. I think that’s called “cost-efficient.”

We hope you find the right Ottawa divorce lawyer for you.

Author: Alistair Vigier is the CEO of ClearWay Law

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