Can the court order my retired father, who is a single father, to make more money (Canadian Law) (revised to anonymous) (I'm sorry about deleting and re-posting the question, there are family details and the site was attaching my real name. I'm reposting using an email address that isn't linked to me.) My father was married to his wife for over 20 years and she recently started a divorce. He retired after many years in a higher paying job, as he had always planned to do, to focus on his acreage and business. The pension is quite decent, more than most people get. However she pressured him to make more money anyway, and since their rural area has few good jobs, so he tried working away from home, which he hated. But he explained to me that he had to work, or she might leave him. Suddenly she divorced him. So he stopped working a second job, which he only did to make her happy. Now she is using his one particular past income statement to "prove" to the judge that he CAN make more money, just because he worked a lot that year. Furthermore, he's the primary caretaker of their daughter because the mom left without saying goodbye, and the mother is not pursuing custody in any way. The judge has ordered him to pay half his entire income to the mom. That means each of my dad and my sibling have a quarter of the income to take care of them, while the mom gets half. This seems wrong to me. The mom is also doing things like hiring expensive lawyers, which he is unwilling to do because it's whittling away at their savings, so she might win. The full court arguments will be in months. In the meantime the court ordered a huge payment (50% of all income monthly). The judge ordered him to "get a job," because "everyone else does," but that seems wrong to me for a retired single parent. 1) What happens if my dad just can't, realistically, pay the huge interim amount that was awarded to the wife? (50% of his income) Also he can't really get loans because of a lien 2) Is my dad going to be forced to work in the long run? Should he just "accept it" and start taking loans for a lifetime of huge payments to his ex-wife who doesn't even look after the daughter? 3) Does the court care that his ex-wife was pressuring him to make more money and it made him miserable? If she divorced him literally because they couldn't agree about his work, it seems unfair for her to use the courts to get her way.
I am going to convert a set of comments into an answer. Please note, IANAL, especially in your jurisdiction. You are asking the wrong question. The Court is not specifically ordering your father to make more money; it is ordering him to support his ex-wife (XW) at a level similar to what she enjoyed during the 20-year marriage. This is not outlandish. In fact, it would be typical of a divorce in the old days, when the mother (1) was likely to have custody of any minor children and (2) was likely to have not worked outside the home, at least, not in a high-skill job. It's less typical today, since these conditions are less common now. He can do this by continuing to work to make more money, or by giving her most of his pension, or by selling off his land, etc. How is his issue. However, your father is making no attempt to improve his situation, and as I will discuss below, this doesn't seem unprecedented. Even though XW has hired an attorney, he has not, using the excuse it is too expensive&mdash;while the XW&rsquo;s capable attorney takes him to the cleaners. Penny wise pound foolish. This is a serious error. He has not entered into a formal custody arrangement. XW could appear at any time demanding at least half-time custody, for whatever reason. This is a serious error. He has taken on unofficial sole custody of the minor child (your half-sister, I suppose), without asking for child support, even though this would substantially offset the alimony to XW. He could probably get this even before the full court hearing, although, again, IANAL, and he needs a local lawyer to handle such a petition. This is a very serious error. He allowed XW to present what you feel is an unrealistic picture of his income based on his second job. Now, depending on your father's age, maybe lowering the standard of living and retiring on a pension is unrealistic. But did your father make any attempt to show that XW had worked before or during the marriage or had marketable skills? At least in some jurisdictions, alimony would be reduced by what the Court feels XW should contribute to her own upkeep. Since she isn't taking care of children, she can't use them as an excuse to stay home. This is a serious error. He could also explain that since he was now in charge of the minor child, it was unfair to ask him to work far from home (more common with the sexes reversed, but not unheard of). Did he introduce a more complete income history showing that the second job was recent, intended to be temporary, away from home, and he detested it? Or did he just let XW bring in her version, unopposed? A lawyer would have introduced this argument if it is valid where you live. This is a serious error, that must be remedied before the final hearing. My first thought was that your father is still in shock from XW leaving him and petitioning for divorce, but on re-reading your description of why he took the second job, frankly, he seems to arrange his life to get pushed around and then whine about it. You need not indulge this. Tell him to get a divorce lawyer, not go around looking for someone to sympathize over the bad deal he got after "saving" money representing himself.
united-states In Colorado (which is an outlier among U.S state court systems), trial court judge in the state court system has a duty to rule on pending motions within three months, and if they do not, a litigant can, after providing certain notices to the judge and appropriate authorities in the court administration office move to have the judge's paycheck suspended until the judge rules. In practice, even most lawyers don't know that this rule exists. Those lawyers who are aware of this rule virtually never utilize it, out of the well founded belief that it only makes sense to do so if you are a client in a very time dependent situation whom you are certain the judge will rule against when the judge actually gets around to ruling and you want to get on to the appellate process quickly for the client. Even then, the prevailing assumption is that the judge will be prejudiced against litigant in all discretionary matters for the rest of the case, and that the lawyer for that litigant will be at a disadvantage before that judge for the rest of his or her legal career. Colorado has no similar duty for municipal court judges or administrative law judges (who are not administrative part of the state judicial branch), or for appellate court judges. Likewise, there is no such duty in federal court. In an extreme circumstance, a state court litigant could file a Colorado Appellate Rule 21 motion (formerly called a writ of mandamus) with the Colorado Supreme Court seeking interlocutory relief from the excessive delay, and a federal court litigant in an Article III federal trial court could seek parallel interlocutory relief from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Circuit in which the trial court is located. But, either way, the likelihood of the relevant appellate court actually granting interlocutory relief for excessive delay by a trial court in addressing a pending matter is virtually nil, unless the case is one statutorily entitled to priority scheduling such as election law cases, protective order cases, and in Colorado state court, in certain civil cases involving very elderly parties. By way of example, I have had civil cases in which dispositive motions have been fully briefed and awaiting a ruling from a judge in both a general jurisdiction state trial court, and also in a different federal court, in which no ruling was forthcoming for more than a year after the matter was fully briefed. It isn't terribly unusual when appellate court rulings are released, to see that the oldest case ruled upon (often an appeal of a serious criminal conviction) that day was filed five or more years before the opinion is issued, even though once a trial court record is transmitted to the court (which typically takes three to six months), and there are typically only three or four appellate briefs to be filed plus half an hour of oral argument to conduct once the case is fully briefed for the appellate judges to consider before ruling. There are rare cases where proceedings can be even slower due to exigent circumstances. For example, I once had a limited jurisdiction civil case that went to trial over automobile repairs in which the presiding judge who had heard all of the testimony and taken careful notes from it had a serious health incident the evening after the last day of the trial, leaving him hospitalized for seven months, and in which it was discovered that the tape recorder that was supposed to have recorded the trial court proceedings that could have been used to create a transcript for use by another judge to rule on the case was broken and had recorded nothing. A year after the trial was completely and the judge had recovered and returned to work, we got the judge's ruling that he otherwise would have provided within a week (because that would have been his normal practice, not because he was required to do so) had he not been hospitalized. Needless to say, no one can tell the U.S. Supreme Court to speed up ruling on a matter in any binding way. There are some exceptions to this in U.S. criminal law trial practice at both the state and local and at the federal level, where there is a constitutional right to a speedy trial that if abridged results in the dismissal of charges against the defendant, and there are a few other deadlines of a similar character related to the post-conviction process. There is also a very short deadline in criminal cases, once a defendant is arrested, for the defendant to have a first appearance before a judge.
I regret to inform you that it is unlikely you would be able to make a spreadsheet to calculate "reasonable atty's fees". You could make one for filing for reasonable atty's fees, but the reasonableness adds in the ambiguity. When I clerked for a Fed. Judge, more or less I would skim through the time spent by the attorney(s) and the time spent by the paralegal(s). Then when considering the case and its complexity (esp. after reviewing all the pleadings, etc.) and it didn't seem especially excessive, I would recommend accepting it. If I thought it was excessive, like they were really milking their claim for atty's fees, I would review more thoroughly. In that case, I would suggest knocking down hours for certain times spent or changing certain activities from Atty to Para, such as "Atty: Check PACER/CMECF for case status - 0.5hr" I would knock down to 0.1 and change to the paralegal, Which could change that one entry from like $300 down to like $60. Do that four times and you get a grand. Same with large times spent "filing" documents, it doesn't take a long time to file documents as long as cmecf is up. I usually wouldn't consider adjusting "skilled" entries, like Analyzing, Drafting, Editing, Strategizing, etc., unless they seems especially egregious (considering case complexity). Also, like commented above, when there are an excessive number of attorneys, the time may get knocked back as the number of hours spent on it may be considered unreasonable. Then, after I went through everything, I would give my bench brief to the Judge, he would likely make changes to it and give it back. Then I would draft the Order, he would sign, and it would be entered.
I don't know Canadian rental law, but as a general rule in civil cases you don't get to play Perry Mason and bring in evidence at the last minute. If you have evidence that the landlord broke the law then disclose it immediately and use it to pressure him into settling. His later lies to you are less important than the fact that he broke the law in the first place. However you can certainly testify about what he said as evidence that he has acted in bad faith.
While I am a U.S. attorney, the U.K. and U.S. are essentially the same on these issue in practice: "reasonable wear and tear" is a classic issue of fact to be decided by the judge (unlike the U.S. there are never juries in U.K. landlord-tenant disputes) based upon the evidence presented to him and his or her good judgment if the case goes to court. There won't be a lot of case law that is specific enough to provide guidance in your particular case (if any) because cases like these aren't worth appealing and creating case law on and because the law intentionally vests judges with great discretion on these issues and only intervenes in appellate decisions when a judge is deeply out of line. The legal definition of "reasonable wear and tear" is basically vacuous and don't provide much meaningful guidance. I know you are joking, but no, do not set it on fire. You will find yourself incarcerated for arson, with a felony criminal record and a restitution judgment in the amount of the damages and a fine and court costs as well, and your credit record will be screwed and no one will rent to you ever again if they find out by doing a cursory background check. Your mum probably won't even invite you to Christmas dinner this year. If they charge your security deposit and you don't think you owe it, you would have to sue them for a return of the part of your security deposit you don't owe, knowing that you face a risk of paying their legal fees if you lose, but will get your fees if you hire a lawyer and win (caveat: there are more nuances to fee shifting in the U.K. courts than I spell out here which are rather technical). If they say you owe more than your security deposit and you don't pay, they can sue you for the balance, knowing that they face a risk of paying your legal fees if they lose, but will get their fees if they win. In practice, it doesn't really make economic sense for either party to hire an attorney because the amount of the fees is so high relative to the amount of money at stake. The security deposit is 2-4 hours of legal time, and the amount claimed is maybe 7-14 hours of legal time, neither of which is sufficient to address the respective issues economically in a fully litigated hearing. Short of going to court, you can provide them documentation and your video to show that you are right and to discourage them from docking your security deposit (in full, anyway) or suing you, ideally A.S.A.P. before they are too committed to taking legal action. You could also propose a compromise and see if you can get them to agree to it with neither party facing the risk of going to court.
Defaulting on student loans is—along with back taxes and child support—one of the three cases where a court order is not required for wage garnishment. This article spells out remedies against such defaults. For example, they can intercept your tax refund, Social Security payments, or your wage. They can take up to 15%, but not more than 30 times the federal minimum wage. So yo don't need to have signed a single thing other than the original loan agreement. That does not guarantee that your particular situation is iron-clad, but it is not obviously legally improper. The only way to be sure is to hire an attorney to fight the garnishment. A brief initial consultation is probably free.
Whether or not the estate has an obligation to pay the mortgage is really dependent on the terms of the estate plan and the solvency of the estate. The fact that someone is on the deed to a property (whether a deed of gift or a transfer on death instrument) that automatically passes upon death of the original owner to a relative has little or nothing, really, to do with the estate plan. While it may have been part of the person's ultimate plan for the disposal of their assets in life and at death, that is different than being part of the actual estate plan, which deals with the disposition of assets upon death, setting out the wishes of the deceased as it pertains to all property. There are lots of people who end up in this position, even though the original person on the deed did not intend to purchase or leave the other any property. It happens a lot when say a child does not have adequate credit to secure a mortgage to buy a home, but has the money to pay a mortgage. So, in that scenario usually a parent or grandparent will put the mortgage in their name (the other will live there and pay the mortgage) and then in the event the "helper" dies, they have it pass to the other at death, either thru a "TOD" or a "joint tenancy", so that in the event they die intestate, or if the will is challenged, there will be no question who owns the house...the equity in it, anyway. It (the instrument) is its own separate entity, not subject to the will except to the extent the deceased makes it subject (I'm getting to that part). Like a life insurance policy, that pays on death but is not subject to any terms of the will, it can stand alone since deed is its own instrument, separate from any wills or trusts. Under federal law, the mortgage must be allowed to remain in effect without changes when it passes from one person to another because of a death. This negates any due-on-sale clause in the mortgage. Who pays for the remainder of what is owed, however, generally depends on the deceased's will. The will might stipulate, for example, that the heir receive the home, free and clear, with the estate to pay all monies due. In this case, the executor will either use liquid assets, or sell other non-liquid assets in the estate to pay off the mortgage. Other times, it will say that the heir get the equity, plus X amount of dollars, which the heir can put toward the home's mortgage or not. If the will is silent on the issue, it is the responsibility of the heir/person to whom the property transfers (they needn't even be an heir) to pay the mortgage upon its normal term due, or sell the property to satisfy the debt. In the event the property is worth less than the remaining mortgage, the bank will usually take the house in "deed in lieu of foreclosure" rather than seek overage from the estate.
1: What's the correct process to get a restraining order? The police aren't involved in the formal process, although sometimes people go to the police and are told that they have to go to a judge instead. The aggrieved plaintiff presents an ex parte affidavit or makes statement in person under oath to a duty judge (who often asks clarifying questions). If this statements states a basis for a protection order one issues with a prompt return date (a week or two). At the return date the order either becomes final if the defendant doesn't show up, is vacated if the plaintiff doesn't show up, or is tried in an evidentiary hearing if both show up. Of course, a court order is ultimately just a piece of paper and there is no legal recourse against the government if they don't successfully stop the person restrained from doing something. Also enforcement of restraining orders was a lot more lax in 1987 than it is today, and men asking for restraining orders were taken less seriously then, than they are now, by most judges. 2: Can Dan keep his adultery secret during that process? Not really. In the initial ex parte hearing, Dan can probably tell the story artfully in a way that hides the adultery, but in the adversarial hearing, if there is one, the other side (or their lawyer) can ask him under oath about the affair and he has to answer truthfully in a public court hearing setting. 3: Is it plausible that Dan's family and friends don't learn about that process? Yes. Unless he's famous enough to make the newspapers (which in a decent sized city is pretty famous), and if he initiates the process, the only person who gets formal notice before the order issues is the court, and if the court issues the initial order, the only person who gets notice is the defendant. If Dan doesn't call family or friends as witnesses and don't tell his workplace why he's at court, nobody is told. It isn't a secret. It's a matter of public record that could be subsequently discovered at any time. But there is no active means of notification of friends and family in the short term. Realistically, Dan might ask a cop or a lawyer what to do, get accurate or inaccurate information, and decide not to pursue it for fear of creating sworn proof of his affair at a hearing. Cops love to provide legal advice that they aren't qualified to dispense. Dan's concern is particularly relevant because this happened in New York State in 1987 when New York State didn't have no fault divorce at the time, and the outcome of divorce proceedings on the merits for property division and alimony and custody would have been heavily influenced by marital fault in the divorce case. Revealing an affair under oath as he might have been required to do at a hearing would have crushed him in a subsequent divorce outcome if his wife found out and decided to divorce him.