THE SURVEY OF CHILD SUPPORT AWARDS: INTERIM ANALYSIS OF PHASE 2 DATA
(October 1998 to March 2000)
CSR-2001-2E
Endnotes
Includes all cases with paying parent income regardless of whether the case reported a monthly child support award amount.
1. In Alberta, the Rules of Court and Practice Notes provide for the filing and serving of a Notice to Disclose. The practice of the Court is to strictly enforce the remedies, including costs, in the event of non-compliance.
2. In Canada, a couple may live "separate and apart" in the same residence if they cease to live as a "family unit," suspending sexual, economic and social ties. However, this is very rare.
3. There are provisions for a "substitute service" (e.g. publication of a newspaper notice) in cases when a respondent cannot be located.
4. In Alberta, the respondent will often file a Demand of Notice when the divorce is not contested. This is not a defence, but a response that ensures that he or she is notified of every application.
5. In Saskatchewan, after the parties have indicated that they are ready to proceed to trial, a pre-trial hearing conducted by a judge of the Court of Queen's Bench (who will not be the trial judge) must be held. This hearing is attended by the parties and their counsel. Its purpose is to mediate a settlement or, if this cannot be done, to obtain agreement on as many issues as possible in order to reduce the length of the trial. Pre-trial conferences are also held in St. John's, Nova Scotia, Manitoba, Alberta, and at some locations in Ontario. In Ontario, a new set of Family Court rules came into force in all unified family court jurisdictions (also in all provincial courts) in the fall of 1999. The new rules introduce a system of judicial case management for all family cases. Under the new rules, the parties involved in contested cases are required to take part in three types of pre-trial conferences: (1) a case conference; (2) a settlement conference; and (3) a trial conference. The rules require that a case conference be held in every case; a settlement conference must be held before the case can be placed on the trial list; and a trial management conference is required only when requested or ordered by the judge (intended for long, complex trials). The parties must attend all conferences in person. In Yukon, a pre-trial conference or settlement conference is available and usually is used if the parties are represented by counsel.
6. In the unified family courts in Ontario, examinations for discovery can only be conducted with leave of the court.
7. Programs in the Ottawa and London unified family courts, along with the other unified family courts in Ontario, focus on parenting issues rather than legal issues. Toronto's program covers both aspects.
8. Divorce Act, R.S.C. 1985 (2nd Supp.), c.3.
9. Some sites have also collected data from cases proceeding under provincial legislation. For purposes of analysis, these cases have been omitted from this report.
10. A total of 1,465 cases were excluded from the database for purposes of the analyses presented in this report for the following reasons: cases in which the child support award amount stemmed from a previous order dated prior to implementation of the Federal Child Support Guidelines on May 1, 1997 (n=678; including 35 cases in which no date for the order was provided); cases representing variations that resulted in termination orders with no child support awards (n=5); cases relying solely on affidavits for data capture and not including information on whether the case represented a divorce or variation (n=9); cases designated as
"entry not finished"
in the database (n=61); duplicate cases (n=66); cases in which it was indicated that they had proceeded under provincial legislation (n=645); and one case that, on manual inspection, appeared to be problematic.11. Due to the large number of write-in responses, any particular response given in fewer than five cases was not coded separately; instead, these responses were coded into a general "other" category.
12. Department of Justice Canada. A Comparison of Selected and Non-Selected Court Sites and an Analysis of Representativity of Courts in the Central Divorce Registry Data Base. Background Paper BP05E, 1999.
13. The majority of the cases silent on child support are from Ontario.
14. This does not include issues dealt with in supporting documents available to the data-capture clerks.
15. See Appendix B, Coding Manual, p. 7 for definitions of access terms.
16. Because it was not possible to determine whether cases with $0 coded for monthly child support award amount represented actual awards of $0, these cases were excluded from this analysis (n=308). In addition, cases with monthly child support award amounts in excess of $6,000 were examined manually in order to determine if these awards were accurate, given the other information available on the case. On this basis, monthly award amounts in excess of $10,000 for 11 cases were excluded from these analyses.
17. This represents the total child support award amount, which includes only 'add-ons' for special or extraordinary expenses.
18. It was not possible to determine with certainty whether cases having $0 entered for income actually reflected no income. For this reason, these cases have been excluded from the relevant analyses (n=522 for paying parent income and n=969 for receiving parent income).
19. Although income information taken from sources other than an actual order may not be reliable, given the importance of income information in the present study, the data collected from other sources were used.
20. Child Support Guidelines have been designated in a few provinces, which are used in these jurisdictions if both parents reside in that province. If the parents reside in different provinces/territories, the Federal Child Support Guidelines are used. With the exception of Prince Edward Island where some of the awards in the lower income levels are slightly higher, the table amounts of designated provinces are the same as the federal table amounts.
21. See page 33 for a discussion of the limitations of this estimate.
22. It should be noted that if an amount for special or extraordinary expenses is not specified in an order, then the expenses are not enforceable by the provincial/territorial Maintenance Enforcement Program agencies.
23. Monthly special or extraordinary expenses amounts in excess of $1,000 were examined manually to determine whether these amounts were accurate according to other information in the case. On this basis, three cases with monthly amounts greater than $1,500 were excluded from analysis of this variable. In addition, 23 cases with a monthly amount of $0 were also excluded.
24. Annual and lump sum special or extraordinary expenses were awarded in very few cases (50 and 53 cases, respectively), and thus were not analyzed further.
25. See page 33 for a discussion of the limitations of this estimate.
26. It should be noted that the data probably do not accurately reflect the number of cases in which undue hardship is raised. If a claim for undue hardship is raised and subsequently fails, there may be no record of the application in the case file.
27. In order to allow for minor variations from the table amounts as coded, the child support award amount was considered to be equal to the table amount if it was within 5 percent (either higher or lower) of the table amount. Thus, an award was considered less than the table amount if it was more than 5 percent less; similarly, amounts greater than 5 percent above the award amount were considered higher than the table amount.
28. For all regression analyses, 44 sole custody cases with paying parent incomes over $150,000 were excluded.
- Date modified: