Judge blasts divorcee’s ‘scandalous’ conduct
Case dragged through courts for four years, while costs went well beyond six figures
High-conflict divorces chew up resources and expose the inadequacies of the courts dealing with emotional parties who lie, forge documents, make abusive claims and run up huge costs for the system and their spouses.
Although the vast majority of divorces proceed without a trial and such cases are outliers, they consume most of the judicial resources and are a persuasive argument for moving family dissolution into an administrative tribunal setting offering multidisciplinary support for parents.
Unlike commercial or other civil law conflicts, family judgments involving children don’t provide closure — the parties continue dealing with each other for the children.
In one battle described in a B.C. Supreme Court ruling this week, the trial lasted four years — longer than the marriage itself — and required six court applications, four pretrial and two midtrial for disclosure and 18 days of proceedings.
Running from Sept. 29, 2014, to May 26, 2015, the case was protracted by the “mendacity and manipulations” of the wife who lied repeatedly under oath and refused to accept any reasonable settlement. Her misconduct continued after the trial and was so “scandalous and outrageous,” Justice Lance Bernard said
“it must be firmly, clearly, and unequivocally denounced.”
The parties were anonymized by initials to protect their son, as is the court’s practice in these nasty family feuds.
In July 2012, J.M.C. learned his marriage was over when his wife, Y.S., moved into a jointly and recently purchased home with their 18-month-old son.
She called her husband at work and said their marriage was over.
At issue was the property division of a duplex and an apartment, worth about $2 million today in Burnaby, and parenting arrangements. The perplexed dad didn’t get to see his son for eight months and his parenting time was constrained because of unfounded allegations of abuse by the mother.
Justice Bernard said that aside from making up those claims, the mother also “expertly” doctored financial documents in an unprecedented forgery.
She fabricated years of banking records, involving multiple financial institutions, thousands of entries of credits and debits, which resulted in the need to forensically investigate many, if not all, of the transactions contained in the records, both before, and after the authentic records were obtained.
“To add insult to injury,” Justice Bernard noted, “the wife accused the husband of paranoia in relation to his suspicions that she was ‘setting him up’ and altering financial documents; these were, eventually, demonstrated to have been wellfounded suspicions. Notably, but for the perseverance of the husband’s counsel, the wife’s sophisticated deceptions might never have been discovered.”
There were also third-party communications that supported the information in the fabricated documents and — because of the degree of sophistication, their apparent authenticity and the internal consistency — it was necessary to have a banking expert authenticate records.
The woman’s parents colluded with her in the plan to erase the husband from her life and minimize his role in their son’s life.
All of it cost the man hugely financially and emotionally, but he won an order recovering $133,672.48. As a result of the ordeal, the father had sought full reimbursement for his trial costs — $104,172.48: $86,291.50 in legal fees, $7,282.52 in disbursements and $10,598.46 in taxes.
He also wanted $44,729.07 for his application for full reimbursement — $36,400 in fees, $1,037.82 in disbursements and $4,411.25 in taxes and $2,880 for his personal expenses.
Of note, in order to keep costs down, the dad assisted directly in many ways including copying, preparing binders, tabbing documents, drafting and proofreading some of his affidavits.
After a five-day hearing in New Westminster, district registrar Scott Nielsen awarded the husband the full amount of the trial costs to be collected from his ex because of her reprehensible behaviour: “In my view, the lawyer was frugal in every aspect of the proceeding, up to and including the trial. She was a five-year call and her hourly rate was $225. She did not charge for the time of her legal assistant, and she allowed the claimant to perform office work related to his file in order to assist in keeping the legal costs to a minimum.”
But Nielsen thought the bill from a different law firm for the subsequent costs’ hearing was too high. “In all the circumstances,” the registrar explained, “I find the amount claimed for the assessment of special costs is disproportionate to the costs of the family law proceeding itself, is not objectively reasonable ... and when viewed globally, does not result in a fair fee ... the claimant is awarded $29,500, consisting of $25,000 in fees, $3,000 in taxes, and $1,500 for disbursements, inclusive of taxes.”
It must be firmly, clearly, and unequivocally denounced.