An Indigenous woman leaving an abusive relationship must deal with all the issues faced by any woman leaving an abuser: ensuring safety for herself and her children, finding housing, making safe custody and access arrangements for her children, sorting out financial and property issues with her former partner and so on.
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CLEO (Community Legal Education Ontario) has just released an excellent new tool, Steps in a Family Law Case, which guides you through family court processes.
This is a very helpful resource for service providers and women with family law issues. It lays out the family law case as a flowchart.
When the violence against women movement became increasingly organized in Canada and shelters for abused women and rape crisis centres began to open, most of the work was focused on helping women get away from their abusers. There was an inherent belief that this was what was best for women. While shelter work has always been rooted in a commitment to providing non-judgemental support to women,
The number of litigants in family court who do not have lawyers has reached a critical point, with between 50 and 80% of cases now involving at least one party who is unrepresented. While not having a lawyer is of concern to any litigant, the impact on a woman who has left an abusive partner is significantly greater.
From time to time, the court will impute income in a child support case. This means the judge finds that the amount of income the parent who is paying support is claiming is not a fair reflection of what they could be earning and, to address this, assigns an income to the payer,
Mandatory charging is a policy in place across Canada that requires police to lay charges in domestic violence cases where the officer involved believes there is a reasonable likelihood of getting a conviction, whether or not the victim wants a charge to be laid.
In order to understand the challenges this has created,
In Canada, marriage is ended by way of a civil divorce, pursuant to the terms of the Divorce Act, which set outs such requirements as:
At least one of the parties has to have been resident in the province where the divorce application is being made for at least one year
The parties have to have lived separate and apart for at least one year OR the party seeking the divorce must be able to establish either adultery or unconscionable cruelty by the other party
As well as terminating the marriage,
I think sometimes when people hear the word advocacy they assume it means standing up in front of a room full of people or a street filled with demonstrators or in a government committee room to call for some kind of systemic change. Then, they assume that means they cannot do it.
From DurhamRegion.com “I feared for my life and for my children’s lives,” Ms. Murphy says, struggling to contain her tears, even though years have passed. “I was lost. I didn’t know where to turn for help.”
A friend recommended Luke’s Place.
Ms. Murphy had never heard of the local agency —
In 2011, Pamela Cross was commissioned by the Centre for Research and Education on Violence Against Women and Children at Western University to undertake research and write a report about confidentiality issues in the development and use of community collaborations to address high risk domestic violence cases.
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