New Divorce Regulations Take Effect Today
Ontario's Attorney General brings in new regulations on divorce that take effect today. The new regulations include provisions for couples seeking a divorce to attend a mandatory information session as well as being offered mediation which some reports indicate is, in certain circumstances, paid for by the Province. In addition, "information referral co-ordinators" will assist people to where they need to be in the family courts. The last "pillar" of the reforms is to make adversarial court fights less painful.
The announcement is an expansion of a process initiated in part by improvements in accessing court forms online through the Ontario Court Forms Assistant (formsassistant.ontariocourtforms.on.ca).
Attorney General Chris Bentley is quoted as saying "Going to court and having a court battle and family proceedings can be enormously costly, take a lot of time, and probably most significant, can be very emotionally damaging to children, and to the two individuals."
Reducing the costs and complexity of Court proceedings in Ontario has been a priority since the release of the Report of the Honourable Coulter Osborne (Civil Justice Reform Project) in 2007.
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