One of the difficulties in family law is actually collecting on judgments or support payments when a spouse fails to make required payments.
In Ontario, the Family Responsibility Office (FRO) is most effective at collecting from an employed person by garnishing his wages. When someone is self-employed (or employed through another family-owned business), however, it becomes more difficult. And some former spouses decide they just won’t pay.
My wife and I were in Bermuda a few years ago, making a presentation for the Bermuda CA Institute. We chatted with a gentleman on a ferry ride and discovered he owed a small fortune to his ex-wife and had decided to stop working, use what funds he could scrape together, buy a sailboat, and travel. He had spent the previous four years on a sailboat spending the rest of his money, with no fixed address and no income. Good luck collecting from him!
Recent media stories provided some highlights from the Auditor General of Ontario’s recent report, which included criticism of FRO for not having adequate systems in place to take action when a parent fails to make support payments. Mr. McCarter, the Auditor-General, concluded that not much had changed since his last review in 2003. This is unfortunate, as many former spouses, usually women, do not have the resources to mount a legal challenge to collect on outstanding amounts.
I got a call a few weeks ago from a client who first retained us several years ago. She is a tenacious person who is willing to invest in the process required to obtain, if possible, what she believes is rightfully owed to her. It seems that the ex-husband is in default of child-support payments and there is an outstanding judgment that she is having difficulty collecting.
Cases like these particularly inspire us. A judge ordered the payment of support and now it’s a matter of determining whether the former spouse can pay. She especially needs the money to take care of their children, an essential right. No one likes to see children suffer as a result of one or more spouses acting out of anger, vindictiveness, selfishness, greed or a combination of these emotions.
Once a judgment is ordered, someone who wants to avoid making payments has a lot of ways to skirt the law. So now we test our ability to locate assets and income – the search is on!
