Your search

The present study revolves around an observation by the Honorable Nicholas Kasirer according to which an incompatibility of temperament exists between civil liability and conjugal life, making it difficult to sanction faults committed between spouses or de facto spouses by virtue of the extra- contractual liability regime. Drawing a connection between two legal disciplines - family law and civil liability - the proposed reflection revolves around the deviations incurred by the norm depending on the bond uniting the parties. In order to identify these deviations, the author first turns their gaze to the past, highlighting the technical and moral obstacles that have historically hindered the effectiveness of the law of extracontractual liability in the conjugal context. A picture of the contemporary jurisprudential treatment of the various faults relating to conjugal and married life is then drawn up. Through this exercise, certain behaviors recently assimilated to the commission of a civil fault, such as parental alienation, are highlighted. At the end of this portrait, the reader will be able to observe the shift incurred by the aims of the law of extracontractual liability as it interacts with the conjugal and marital cell. Initially used as a tool to protect the institution of marriage, the general regime of extra-contractual liability is increasingly seen as an essential vector in the establishment of a fundamental conjugal and marital civility.

The 11th edition of Family Law: Cases, Notes and Materials is a comprehensive, carefully curated collection of text, cases, commentary, notes, and questions dealing with the key areas of family law. It is intended as the fundamental text for introductory courses in family law, but, as with previous editions, it is also a useful initial research source for practitioners. This book provides up-to-date coverage of the main issues in family law, the laws governing marriage and divorce, property for both married and unmarried cohabitants, spousal support, child support, parenting, and domestic agreements. This edition includes coverage of emerging aspects of family law as well, such as evolving concepts of parentage, hearing the views of children, the impact of family violence, and social trends that affect family law in an increasingly diverse Canadian society. The 11th edition includes: detailed consideration of the 2021 reforms to parenting laws in the Divorce Act (Bill C-78) and corresponding provincial legislation, and the Supreme Court in BJT v. DT ; greater emphasis on inter-relationship of various issues in family law, in particular, significance of family violence for a range of issues, including the Supreme Court decision in Barendregt v. Grebliunas ; more emphasis on issues of professional responsibility, ethics, and the practice of family law ; updated discussion of issues related to domestic contracts, including the Supreme Court decision in Anderson v. Anderson ; greater consideration of issues related to the increased diversity of Canadian society and the growing number of multiracial families ; consideration of legal issues related to polyamorous families and parenting of transgender children. --publisher.

This paper traces the history of the "legal family" in Canada, the development of the laws governing marriage and the recognition of other familial relationships, and discusses some of the challenges presently facing lawmakers, both legislators and judges, in this area. One theme of this paper is that marriage and the family are not static institutions, but rather their social and legal significance have changed over the course of history in response to changing beliefs, values, behaviors, social structures, technology and demographics. Another theme is that the broad movement towards formal gender equality has had a profound effect on the legal treatment of marriage and the family. However, in most contemporary marriages there is still a differentiation of gender roles, and women continue to be vulnerable in the event of separation. Familial relationships based on marriage and biological ties are still very significant in Canada, but there is more social and legal recognition of a range of non-traditional familial relationships than in most other countries, including non-marital opposite-sex cohabitation, same-sex marriage, social parentage and more recently multiple parentage arising from the use of artificial reproductive technology. Despite the recognition of a more diverse range of family forms, and the adoption of a functional and flexible approach to the definition of legally significant familial relationships, monogamous conjugality is likely to remain a central concept of Canadian law, and Canada seems unlikely to extend legal recognition to polygamy.

McGill Law Journal Revue de droit de McGill PRIVACY, CORRECTIVE JUSTICE, AND INCREMENTALISM: LEGAL IMAGINATION AND THE RECOGNITION OF A PRIVACY TORT IN ONTARIO Thomas DC Bennett* This article considers the nature of com- mon law development as exemplified by the re- cent privacy case of Jones v. Tsige. The author focuses on Jones, in … Continued

Many scholars have offered theories that purport to explain the whole of the law of torts. At least some of these theories do not seem to be specific to a single jurisdiction. Several appear to endeavor to account for tort law in at least the major common law jurisdictions or even throughout the common law world. These include Ernest Weinrib's corrective justice theory, Robert Stevens's rights theory, and Richard Posner's economic theory. This article begins by explaining why it is appropriate to understand these three theories as universal theories of tort law and why it is important that they be so understood. This explanation draws upon various overt claims (or other strong intimations) made by the theorists themselves to the effect that this is how their respective accounts should be understood. The article then proceeds to test these theories, all of which are leading accounts of tort law, against the evidence in Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom, and the United States. The parts of tort law on which we focus are (1) the breach element of the action in negligence, (2) the law that determines when a duty of care will be owed in respect of pure economic loss, (3) the law that governs the availability of punitive damages, (4) the defense of illegality, and (5) the rule in Rylands v. Fletcher and its descendants. The article concludes that none of the theories is a satisfactory universal account of tort law. All of them suffer from significant problems of fit in that they cannot accommodate (often even approximately) the areas of law that we discuss. Although each of the theories contains a great many valuable insights, they all nonetheless fall well short of accomplishing that which they are held out as providing. In the course of this analysis, the article explains why this is an appropriate line of criticism and identifies the degree of lack of fit that we regard as being “significant.”

This article explores issues associated with mutual claims of domestic violence in the context of research on gender and violence, and in the context of litigation tactics commonly employed by perpetrators in child custody and access cases. Quotations from parents involved in such cases illustrate why accurate assessment of mutual cliams requires complete information about social context and the analysis of patterns of domination, power and control in the relationship over time. Recent developments in Canadian law ought to enhance the ability of judges to take such evidence into account. The article aims to provide a lens through which to understand and assess such cases.

"This title addresses civil procedure in Ontario, from preliminary considerations to appeals of motions, applications and actions. It provides readers with knowledge of the litigation process in the Superior Court of Justice and the Court of Appeal for Ontario."-- Provided by publisher.

In the article, we make three claims. First, we argue that a large number of what are traditionally seen as separate torts are, at their core, all about affronts to the dignity of the victim. These include offensive battery, assault, false imprisonment, intentional infliction of emotional distress, defamation, invasion of privacy, some nuisances, and abuse of process (malicious prosecution). These torts do not involve direct physical harm but, rather, emotional distress from having your dignity attacked. Second, we argue that as these torts have developed inside of their own doctrinal silos, there are important differences among the laws governing them. Third, we argue that these differences are not justified and that it would be better to create a consistent tort approach to dignitary harm: tort recovery should lie for injuries resulting from wrongful conduct that is highly offensive and causes more than minor harm. This, it turns out, is the standard that currently applies in a majority of jurisdictions for privacy invasions. If more widely adopted, this standard would, for example, far more easily allow recovery for nasty verbal sexual (or other) harassment, since intentional infliction of emotional distress currently requires a much stronger showing. At the same time, it would preclude recovery for minor physical touchings that technically now qualify as offensive battery. We think this achieves the balance much better.

This article proposes a new conceptual framework for parent-child and adult relationships in the Civil Code of Québec based on the theory of relationships of economic and emotional interdependency. It puts forward a new théorie générale for relationships in Quebec civil law. It argues that the Code should concentrate on relationships of economic and emotional interdependency, irrespective of their form or of their fulfillment of formalities. Their content and qualities should be the law’s object, hence allowing for a functional account of families and personal lives. Doing so would require a recodification of economic and emotional relationships in the Code, to provide a more meaningful legal framework addressing families and personal lives. Fundamentally, the hope is to shift the normative content of family law in Quebec private law from “the family” to relationships, and to take a stance against family law exceptionalism.

How intimate partner violence (IPV) is conceptualized affects what we see when we look at situations involving IPV and what we think the solutions to the problem of IPV are—either in individual cases or in the development of broader legal and policy responses. In this article, it is suggested that while conceptualizing IPV as coercive control is an improvement over previous understandings, it does not go far enough. Coercive control must be located within a broader conceptualization of IPV as a form of social and systemic entrapment if it is not to operate in a harmful manner for victim-survivors.