The Child Support Guidelines The Internet's leading location for Child Support Guideline material. Scroll down to locate the information you want.

What are the Guidelines

Information avaialble through the Family Law Centre

Information available through the Federal Government's Website

Information available in paper

Return to Contents
What are the Guidelines?

As at May 1st, 1997, the Canadian federal government has changed the way child support is dealt with in Canada in two major ways. This was done through the introduction of the Child Support Guidelines and amendments to the Divorce Act. Since then the various provinces have adopted the same approach with most of the provinces adopting Guidelines which mirror the federal Guidelines, although some provinces have enacted their own Guidelines.

Firstly, any new order or agreement for child support made or entered since May 1st, 1997, and any order made after then which varies an earlier order, is on the basis that the payment will not be deductible from the income of the payor or includable in the income of the recipient for Income Tax purposes. This is the opposite of the earlier tax system. (Spousal support payments remain deductable from the income of the payor and includable in he income of the recipient for income tax purposes.)

Secondly, any order made by the court on or after May 1st, 1997, and any variation of an earlier order, for child support must be in accordance with the new Child Support Guidelines which set out tables showing how much is to be paid depending only upon the income of the payor, the number of children being supported and the province or territory in which the payor lives. The Guidelines have a detailed set of rules dealing with additional expenses which may be ordered and how to deal with such things as shared or split custody. It will be quite difficult to get the court to order an amount different than as provided in the guidelines, although parties may still make their own agreements for different amounts.

Below is a guide to the some sources of information about this topic both here at the Family Law Centre and on the rest of the Internet.

Return to Contents
1. Through the Family Law Centre

Here at the FLC you can access much information about the new Child Support Guidelines by checking out the locations set out below.

1.1 The actual text of the final version of the Guidelines. This includes the various amendments up to and including those taking effect on November 1st, 2000

Read the text of the guidelines here. To download your own copy, copy ours or scroll down to the Federal Government's site, listed below.

The Tables are not reproduced here but are available through the Government's site.

Amongst the many topics covered in the FAQ section is one dealing with many aspects of the Child Support Guidelines If there is anything you want to know that isn't discussed there or here, please check out the other sites and locations shown below. If that hasn't helped, send us an e-mail message by going to the bottom of this page and we'll try our best to sort things out for you.

We now have the Internets largest free collection of Comments, articles and papers about the Child Support Guidelines. The authors of various papers relating to different aspects of the Child Support Guidelines have given the FLC permission to post their material here to be available along side our own comments. A number of papers presented have been presented at various Continuing Legal Education seminars and family law conferences. Check these out:

Child Support Guidelines: Highlights & Insights By Professor Nicholas Bala

Variation By Malcolm Kronby

Extraordinary Expenses By Melanie Kraft and Philip M. Epstein

Determining Income Under the Child Support Guidelines By V. Jennifer MacKinnon

Undue Hardship By Ricki D. Harris

Shared and Split Custody By Professor Carol A. Rogerson

Income Over $150,000/Children Over the Age of Majority By Judith M. Nicoll

The Rich Pay Less Child Support in B.C.: (Plester v. Plester & Francis v. Baker) Five Provinces - Two Approaches? By Joel Miller

CSG s. 7(1)(f): What's Extraordinary and What's Not? - 5 Courts of Appeal Have Spoken - The Score is 3 to 2 in Favour of "Subjective" Reasoning: By Joel Miller

The Guidelines Guideline Case By Joel Miller

Child Support Guidelines: Memorandum to Ontario Lawyers By Philip M. Epstein

Child Support Guidelines Legislation: An Overview By Philip M. Epstein

Income Tax Treatment Under the New Child Support Guidelines by Bruce Roher, President of Fuller Jenks Roher Inc., Business Valuators and Litigation Accountants.

The New Child Suppport Guidelines: Renovated Tax Rules by Andrew J. Freedman C.A., C.B.V., A.S.A., a partner in the well known firm of Cole & Partners, Toronto.

1.4 The Federal Government's Child Support Guidelines FAQs - What they think you want to know.

The Department of Justice Canada has published a booklet distributed to family law lawyers and judges, which you can get too, including their own Frequently Asked Questions section. We have reproduced it here.

---

Return to Contents
2 Through the Federal Government's Internet Sites

The federal Child Support Guidelines have been in operation since May 1^st, 1997. The Department of Justice has a really great website filled with all sorts of relevant and useful information regarding the Guidelines. This includes, of course, copies of the legislation and of the Tables as well as informaiton you should know about the Guidelines and a terrifc section in which they collect cases from across the country which discuss how the judges are interpreting the various sections. This is very helpful information for both lawyers and non-lawyers.

From their main Child Support Home Page you can link to a variety of sections.

About Child suppoort in Canada gives a limited overview of the legislation.

10 Things You Need to Know ssets out a FAQ section with relevant information for those not familiar with the CSGs.

Eight Steps to Calculating Child Support takes you through how to determine what you owe or are entitled to.

Laws and Regulations takes you to copies of the legislation setting out the Divorce Act, the Guidelines, and the Tables so you can see these things for yourself. As well, this is the page which takes you into the List of Selected Case Law and Summaries dealing with the CSGs.

Federal Child Support Guidelines: A List of Selected Case Law and Summaries This is the actual listing and summary page. It's a great resource and has been brought up to date as at September, 2000.

The Survey of Child Support Awards: Preliminary Analysis of Phase 2 Data (October 1998--May 1999) by Lorne D. Bertrand, Joseph P. Hornick and Nicholas M.C. Bala (CSR 2000- 2E/2F) is a wonderful peice of research giving us an idea of what is happening on a statistical basis. Some of the main research findings are:

In just over 80 percent of cases (80.6) the mother had sole custody, while the father had sole custody in 8.4 percent of cases.

Shared custody, where the child spends at least 40 percent of the time with each parent, was reported in 5.2 percent of cases.

Split custody, where each parent has custody of one or more of their children, was reported in 4.8 percent of cases.

Most awards were the same as the amounts in the Federal Child Support Tables (59.4 percent), or greater (34.2 percent). Only 6.4 percent of cases reported award amounts less than the table amounts.

Check this out for more information.

Links to related sites includes useful links including one to thhe Statistics Canada page dealing with Families.

Publications takes you to the Tables, various Wrokbooks and other material.

All in all, this is one great site! It shows how a government should be using the Internet to make information available to the affected public. (You can convert any page you are on into French by clicking on the button at the top.) The site is attractive and is very well organized. It looks clean and is easy to read and is a resource to which lawyers should be directing those of their clients who have access to the Internet and which you should be familiar wiht to be sure that you have the infornmation you need.

---

Return to Contents
3. In Paper

You can also order a helpful booklet dealing with this subject from the government at:

Finance Canada Distribution Centre
300 Laurier Avenue, West
Ottawa, Ontario K1A 0G5

These changes are quite dramatically different from the way child support was previously dealt with and you can check out information about them at various places here at the Family Law Centre. If you have any questions about how these changes may affect you, we recommend that you contact an experienced family law lawyer in your community (you can see if there is one listed in the Family Law Lawyers Directory here at the FLC) or you can send us an e-mail message by clicking on the icon below.

If you have any thoughts or comments which you want to pass on to me, please send me a message.