On Oct. 31, as part of Access to Justice Week, the Law Society of Manitoba presented Family Law Services: Pathways to Healthy Separation. The session featured three speakers — each working for agencies geared to assisting parting spouses in avoiding a long, overwhelming and potentially hostile divorce process.
Nina Holatova, a lawyer and program co-ordinator at the Community Legal Education Association (CLIA), called separation and divorce “an unavoidable reality of life” that, in many cases, brings people in contact with the legal system for the first time in their lives.
Nina Holatova, Community Legal Information Association
Holatova noted the oh-so-common conundrum: Many people cannot afford a lawyer but are also deemed ineligible for legal aid.
As a result, she said, many represent themselves. But navigating the family law system as a “self-rep,” she said, can be overwhelming — particularly when considering the large volume of information one needs to manage.
“[CLIA’s] resources first and foremost offer free access to legal information, which in a lot of ways can make people feel more in control and less anxious about the unknown.”
She noted some of CLIA’s offerings: publications (many of which are free), fact sheets, video presentations, archived webinars, an online course and a “phone-in” lawyer referral program.
There is also a booklet about family law for children, specialized brochures for single parents and a guide about uncontested divorces for the self-represented.
The latter, she said, “aims to help people get a divorce without needing to retain a lawyer, and it essentially contains explanations about divorce laws, as well as step-by-step instructions about how to get an uncontested … divorce in Manitoba.”
CLIA also offers a video series on family law in Manitoba, presented in three parts: one on separation, meeting with a lawyer and the possibility of going to court; another on children, parenting arrangements and child support; and another on spousal support, property division and protection orders.
Michael Williams, Manitoba Justice, Family Resolution Services
According to a Government of Manitoba webpage, the FRS is a “single-window” service delivering “a seamless continuum of public, private and community-based services to support family well-being and healthy transitions” — all in an effort to help families “resolve … issues in a safe, collaborative, fair, affordable and timely way.”
Services include the provision of information, referrals to “culturally and linguistically appropriate specialized services,” supports for completing “any prerequisites for court” and a doorway to dispute resolution services such as “arbitration, mediation, and collaborative family law and legal services.”
Willimas said the FRS provides “a holistic, wraparound service to clients.”
“We reflect efforts going back to 2014, 2015 by the deputy ministers of the four western provinces to look at and explore the options available for mandatory mediation,” said Williams. “That particular initiative led to a lot of exchanges of information [between] the four western provinces.”
Then there was the Manitoba Court of Appeal’s decision in Dunford v. Duford, 2017 MBCA 100 — a watershed ruling in which the court found the adversarial court system to be ill-suited for separating families. What followed in Manitoba was its government’s bid to revamp the province’s family law system.
Willimas said the FRS recognizes when particularly sensitive situations present themselves — such as those involving children. For this, there are services around parenting, parenting arrangements and mediation.
It also has at its disposal court navigation specialists.
“They can navigate clients through the filing of initial pleadings, triage a case management system, and you get them ready for court. We don’t provide legal representation, but we do provide enhanced services, and our new sandbox initiative is … [providing] a form of limited legal advice, to help people fill out forms and make sure that they haven’t missed anything in their applications for relief from the court.”
Peter Kingsley, Legal Aid Manitoba
“We are all familiar with the stories of former spouses having intimate details of their lives dissected in court,” he said. “The simple truth is that this is not required. There are a number of options … available to those seeking separation and divorce that are intended to reduce the trauma and cost.”
Kingsley then went on to lay forth the services offered by LAM to those deemed eligible — financially and otherwise.
“Many of our lawyers have been through every level of court in Manitoba; a number of them have been to the Supreme Court of Canada,” he told participants, adding that LAM’s lawyers — both staff and contracted — can reach “just about every region of the province.”
He stressed the duty of legal aid lawyers to first attempt to resolve matters through out-of-court negotiations.
“Your starting point is always going to be sitting down and trying to work through this without having to involve the courts. And only if all other attempts fail, and there is a likelihood of success, will counsel be authorized to go to trial.”
Eligibility also calls for the parties to have been separated for one year. And LAM generally will not get involved with property division, unless the negotiations around division are part of the overall family separation.
Kingsley said that despite having areas it does not touch, LAM still has a “fairly wide and robust area of coverage for most family law matters.”
“We want people to move through this process … with as little trauma as possible.”
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