Forced marriage is a practice in which a marriage takes place without the free consent of either or both of the people getting married.
Arranged marriage can appear similar to forced marriage, inasmuch as family members are involved in selecting people for their son or daughter to consider as a possible spouse.
One particular example of the ongoing abuse many women experience when they leave their partner is legal bullying, especially in family court.
This abuse/bullying can take many forms. One of the most common is that the abuser decides to represent himself, even though he could afford a lawyer. This allows him many opportunities to bully and intimidate his former partner.
A relatively new concept in Canada, voice of the child reports are one technique to ensure that children have the opportunity to be heard in custody proceedings. Such a report, sometimes known as the views of the child, provides information about what the child thinks about his or her life and the issues in dispute between the parents to the court to assist in the decision making process.
Many legal issues arise when a couple separates: custody and access, financial issues and dividing the family property are often the most pressing. Some people decide to attempt to resolve these issues without going to court and use one of a variety of alternative dispute resolution techniques.
Arbitration is one of these techniques.
UPDATED (from April 2015): Women who leave abusive relationships are often reluctant to pursue their financial rights. There are many reasons for this. Some women don’t know they may have a right to share in the family property or to receive support from their spouse. Others feel overwhelmed with the separation process,
Violence against women services generally are seeing more and more women with co-occurring issues. There are a number of reasons for this:
As other community services become underfunded and over-extended, they are referring clients to VAW services
Women who have experienced abuse and are also dealing with mental health or substance use issues prefer the non-judgmental,
This issue can arise in a number of contexts:
a woman has moved to Canada after obtaining a divorce in her country of origin
a woman returns to her country of origin and obtains a divorce while she is there
her spouse returns to their country of origin and obtains a divorce without her knowledge or consent
she needs to establish the validity of a foreign divorce from a previous marriage to allow her to sponsor her new spouse to come to Canada or to be sponsored by a Canadian spouse so she can come to Canada
she does not want the foreign divorce to be legally recognized in Canada because it would preclude her from seeking spousal support in Canada
her spouse has unilaterally obtained a religious divorce outside Canada and she does not wish to be divorced from him
Whether or not a foreign divorce will be legally recognized in Canada depends on the facts of the situation,
The Family Responsibility Office (FRO) is part of Ontario’s Ministry of Community and Social Services. It is responsible for collecting and distributing child and spousal support orders. Where the person paying the support is not doing so, FRO can take steps to enforce payment.
How does FRO become involved?
The Supervised Access Program makes it possible for separated families to deal with some of the problems related to custody and access, particularly when there are safety concerns for either the primary parent or the children.
The Ministry of the Attorney General has supervised access centres across Ontario that provide fully supervised on-site visits in a group setting and supervised exchanges for off-site unsupervised access.
Parenting coordination is a form of alternative dispute resolution that can assist parents implement their parenting plan, usually after a court order for custody and access is in place. Parenting coordinators (PC) are often mental health professionals, but lawyers and mediators can also function as PCs.
Most have some knowledge of divorce/separation,
