Family law · Vancouver, British Columbia
What happens next,
in the order it happens.
Separation. Parenting. Support. Divorce. Written the way the work actually goes, not the way a brochure would tell it.
Read it when you can. Nothing on this page asks you to decide today.
Family law only Your file stays with the lawyer you met Fees agreed in writing first
The firm
You do not have to have decided anything yet
Most people who sit down with us are still working out whether there is anything to decide. That is a reasonable thing to book an hour for, and it is what the first hour is for.
You tell us where things stand, in whatever order it comes out. We ask the questions that decide which route is open to you. Then we tell you what your options are and which one we would take if the file were ours. You leave with that written down, one page, plain English, yours to keep whether you come back or not.
What people expect
A process nobody explains, on a clock nobody shows you, with a bill that arrives afterwards and settles the question of whether it was worth it.
What actually happens
The route is chosen in the first hour and written down. The fee for each stage is agreed before that stage begins. Nine files in ten never see a courtroom.
Practice areas
What we take on
Family law only, which means the person reading your file has read a hundred like it and knows which parts actually decide the outcome.
Separation and divorce
The order things happen in, what each step usually takes, and where the delays really come from.
Talk it through → 02Parenting arrangements
Where the children live, how decisions get made, guardianship, and what happens when one of you wants to move away.
Talk it through → 03Child and spousal support
What the guidelines say, how income is worked out when it is not a salary, retroactive claims, and varying an order once income moves.
Talk it through → 04Property and debt
Family property, excluded property, pensions and the family home, divided the way the pool is actually divided rather than how people assume it is.
Talk it through → 05Agreements
Cohabitation, marriage and separation agreements, drafted so they survive being tested. Also reading the one somebody has handed you.
Talk it through → 06Mediation
When it fits, what it costs next to court, and what happens if the room does not settle on the day.
Talk it through →Keep scrolling
Financial matters
When it is more than a house
and two accounts.
Plenty of files turn on one number nobody has worked out yet. A company, a pension, a flat bought years before any of this started. Those get settled with records rather than argument, and the order the questions are asked in decides what the answers cost.
We will also say when a number is not worth chasing. A valuation takes weeks and it is charged for. If the figure it produces cannot move the outcome, that is worth knowing before it is ordered instead of after.
Following one asset through
Agreements
Signed is not the same as enforceable.
Agreements do get set aside, and it is nearly always one of three places on the page. Every one of them is avoidable while it is being drafted and none of them is fixable afterwards.
What each of you owns and owes, with documents behind it. Thin or missing, and the whole agreement is the easy kind to undo. It is the person who left something out who loses.
You each use your own lawyer, and there has to be real time to do it. Dated the week of a wedding, it invites the argument that one of you had no practical choice about signing.
Incomes move, children change schools, somebody wants to live in another city. An agreement that never considered any of that gets argued over instead of read.
What we draft, and what we read
Four versions of
the same piece of work.
The work underneath each of them is the same. Find out what there really is, say what it means for the two of you, and write it down so that nobody has to come back and ask us again in four years.
How matters proceed
The order of things,
start to finish.
What makes this feel impossible is that nobody tells you the order. Here it is, for a separation that settles, which most of them do.
- 01
You book a time
Online or by telephone, without a form asking why. Evenings are available.
- What we need from you
- Nothing. No forms, no documents, and no account to make.
- What you leave with
- A time, and the name of the lawyer who will be in the room.
- 02
We talk for an hour
You get your options, what each one is likely to cost, and which one we would take if the file were ours.
- What to bring
- Whatever you already have. Nothing is required, and nothing is chased.
- What you leave with
- Your options written down, one page, plain English, yours to keep.
- 03
We gather the facts
Income, property, debts, dates. Most of it you already have; we tell you exactly which parts matter.
- What we ask you for
- Income, property, debts, and the dates that decide which route is open.
- What we do not ask for
- Anything we can obtain ourselves, and anything that changes nothing.
- 04
We put a proposal to the other side
In writing, in plain terms, with the reasoning attached so it can be answered rather than argued with.
- Who writes it
- The lawyer you met. You read it before it goes anywhere.
- Where it goes
- To the other side, or to their lawyer if they have one.
- 05
It settles, or it goes to mediation
Roughly nine files in ten never see a courtroom. Escalation is expensive and mostly optional.
- Who decides
- You do. Court is a route, and it is not the destination.
- If the room does not settle
- Nothing is lost. What was agreed on the day still stands.
- 06
The paperwork is filed
The agreement or the divorce order, filed and returned to you as one package when the file closes.
- Who files it
- We do. You are not sent to a registry with a form.
- What you keep
- One package: the agreement or the order, and everything behind it.
Where people are when they call
Six moments, and not one
of them needs a decision first.
Pick the one that sounds like where you are. It decides which parts are urgent and which parts can wait until you have slept on them.
You have separated and nothing is written down
The date you separated counts for more than most people expect. It starts clocks, and it is far better fixed in writing early than reconstructed two years later in an argument about which conversation counted.
- Worth doing this week
- Write down the date and what was said, for yourself. It costs nothing and it is evidence.
You are still living under the same roof
Separating does not require anybody to move out, and moving out does not settle who keeps the house. Both of those are widely believed and neither is right.
- What actually matters
- Who lives there and who owns it are separate questions, answered separately and often months apart.
You were never married
Two years of living together puts most couples under the same property and support rules as a married couple. People tend to find this out late, and it changes the whole picture rather than part of it.
- The one hard edge
- Unmarried couples have a shorter window to bring a property claim. It is the one thing here that cannot be recovered late.
Support stopped matching the income
A figure set years ago against an income that has since moved is a variation rather than a new case, and it can usually be dealt with without reopening anything else in the file.
- What we ask for first
- The last three years of income, both sides. Most of the answer is in those pages.
The parenting arrangement stopped working
Children get older and work changes. A move to another town carries its own notice requirements and its own timeline, and starting late is what makes it expensive rather than difficult.
- If a move is coming
- Notice has to be given properly and in time. Ask before anybody signs a lease.
Somebody has asked you to sign
You are entitled to your own advice and to the documents behind the numbers. Both, before you sign rather than after. A draft that arrives with a deadline attached is worth reading more slowly, not less.
- The short version
- Nobody can require you to sign anything today.
Common questions
What we are asked
in the first ten minutes.
Much the same six, in roughly this order, by almost everybody who sits down. The answers are here because you should not have to book an hour to get them.
Do I have to go to court? Usually not
Most files finish by agreement or in mediation. Court is one route to a decision and it is the slowest and the dearest one. It is the right route where there is urgency, a real risk, or somebody who will not disclose, and we will tell you if that is where you are rather than letting you find out by drifting there.
How long will this take? It depends on disclosure
A file where both sides produce their documents inside a month behaves nothing like one where that takes a year, and the difference is almost never the law. We will put dates on the parts we control and we will not invent them for the parts we do not.
What is this going to cost? Agreed before it starts
Every fee is agreed and written down before that stage of the work begins, so the number is never something you learn afterwards. What moves it is rarely the hourly rate. It is how much of the work goes on chasing things that should simply have been handed over.
Who keeps the house? Two separate questions
Who lives in it and who owns it are answered separately, and often at different times. Nobody wins the house by staying in it and nobody gives it up by leaving, though the leaving is worth doing on advice rather than in a bad week.
Does it matter who starts first? Occasionally, and then it matters a lot
For most of a file, no. Where it counts is where a time limit is running, where money is moving, or where a child is about to be relocated. Those are worth checking in the first week rather than assuming, because they are the few things that cannot be recovered later.
Can the two of us use one lawyer? No, and here is the version that works
One lawyer cannot advise two people whose interests might part company, and an agreement built that way is the easiest sort to challenge afterwards. Mediation is the version of that idea which does hold: one neutral in the room, and each of you advised separately on what you are being asked to sign.
Who you would be working with
Two lawyers, and the one
you meet keeps your file.
There is no handing down to a junior you have never spoken to, and no reintroducing yourself to somebody new in month four.
M. Alder, K.C. Property and support
Called to the BC bar in 2004. Collaborative law training. Reads the property files, and will tell you when a fight over the house costs more than the house.
R. Woodward Children and parenting
Called to the BC bar in 2013. Parenting coordination. Takes the files with children in them, and writes arrangements that survive a change of address.
When court is right And when it is not
The job is to get you out of this chapter with your money, your parenting time and your composure intact. Files that stay out of court do that faster and for a fraction of the cost.
What you are agreeing to
One hour, a fee agreed
beforehand, a plan on paper.
That is the whole of it. Nothing starts, and nothing is billed, before you have seen it written down.
Contact
Book a first meeting
One hour, a fixed fee agreed beforehand, and a plan on paper at the end of it. That is the whole of what you are agreeing to when you book.
- Telephone
- (604) 555-0163
- [email protected]
- Office
- Downtown Vancouver, or by video anywhere in the province
- Hours
- Weekdays, with evening appointments available
- Privilege
- Everything you say is privileged from the first minute of the first meeting, including the parts you are not sure you should say.