The Court of Queen’s Bench of Alberta recently released a Notice to the Profession and Public outlining changes in judicial policy regarding child support applications. The Court will now strictly enforce the income information provisions under s 21 – 24 of the Federal Child Support Guidelines, SOR/97-175 and s 21 of the Alberta Child Support Guidelines, Alta Reg 147/2005 in child support applications. There are now forms available on the Alberta Courts website that can be used for filing.
An applicant applying for a child support order (including a variance) will no longer be permitted to file an Application and supporting Affidavit unless the applicant has provided the financial information set out in s 21 of the applicable Guidelines. Likewise, a respondent will not be permitted to file a responding affidavit or reply unless he or she has provided the required s 21 information.
This change took effect on May 1, 2016 but will have a grace period until June 1, 2016.
For more information, please see the full Court of Queen’s Bench Notice.
For further reading, LESA offers a number of past seminar papers on child support applications and obligations, including the following which you can purchase from our website and are also available on the LESA Library for annual subscribers:
- Arron D Martens, “Income Determination for Support Purposes – Practical Tips and Pointers” (Paper delivered at the LESA Child Support seminar, November 2014).
- Krista Frohlich, “Getting it Right: A Refresher & Consideration of Common Misapplications of the Guidelines” (Paper delivered at the LESA Advanced Child Support seminar, February 2016).
- Sharon Gray and Carey Leishman, “Practical Considerations for Determining Income for the Many Faced Entrepreneur” (Paper delivered at the LESA Advanced Child Support seminar, February 2016).
- Elizabeth Stock, “High Income trends” (Paper delivered at the LESA Advanced Child Support seminar, February 2016).
