Volume 18, Number 2, 2001
Articles
- The Second Family Conundrum in Child Support - D.A. Rollie Thompson
The child support obligation of step-parents has recently emerged as a significant issue in child support law in Canada, both for legal practitioners and government policy makers. The promises of predictability and consistency which heralded the introduction of child support guidelines have not been realized in this area. Since the introduction of the guidelines in May of 1997, there have been a significant number of litigated cases dealing with issues relating to step-parent liability for support. Practitioners dealing with such cases are faced with an uncertain and unpredictable body of case law, but one which raises the possibility, depending upon the discretion of the court and the circumstances of the case, of the imposition of fairly extensive financial obligations upon step-parents. For policy makers in government, the uncertainty and inconsistency in this area of law reflects, in part, the pull of conflicting value judgments and policy choices about the nature and social role of step-families and indicates the need for further policy clarification.
- What is Marriage-Like Like? The Irrelevance of Conjugality - Brenda Cossman & Bruce Ryder
While the notion of conjugal or marriage-like has become legally ubiquitous in the regulation of non-marital cohabitation in Canada, its meaning remains elusive. A review of the case law and of spousal definitions in income security schemes reveals that the presence or absence of a sexual component to a relationship has become immaterial to, or of declining relevance in, the determination of conjugality. As a result, legal decision-makers have had to grapple with the increasing instability of the distinction between conjugal and non-conjugal relationships.
The question of whether a relationship has a sexual component bears no relation to legitimate state objectives. As a result, the distinction between conjugal and non-conjugal relationships is collapsing as a coherent basis for legal policy. It thus becomes necessary to develop better ways of determining when and how adult personal relationships ought to be recognized in the law. Rather than continuing on the elusive quest for marriage equivalence, it is necessary to reformulate relational definitions to focus more precisely on the kinds of emotional and economic interdependence relevant to the objectives of particular laws.
- Third-Party Child Support: A Post-Chartier Review - Marie L. Gordon