Courts hearing ‘urgent’ family-law issues related to pandemic

Although regular court operations in B.C. have been suspended due to the COVID19 pandemic, a number of ‘urgent’ family-law matters have been heard.

In one case the mother of a boy went to court after the father began denying her parenting times, his justification being that he felt the mom was unlikely to be able to comply with social distancing and other measures recommended by health authorities.

The mom claimed there had been a long pattern of the father and his parents denying and limiting the parenting times.

The father responded by saying that, given the mother’s history of mental-health challenges, the COVID-19 crisis was likely to affect her mental health further and cause her to behave in a manner that would pose a risk to the boy.

In a recent ruling on the case, Provincial Court Judge Robin McQuillan did not accept the mom’s submission and found that whatever resistance the dad has had in the past regarding the mother having parenting time has been well-established based on her mental-health and substance-abuse struggles.

But the judge added that the father had not been able to point to any concrete concerns about the mother and her family’s lack of compliance with the COVID-19 health directives.

“While I do accept that the mother’s variable mental health does give rise to a concern, that concern has been addressed by the fact that all of her parenting is supervised,” said the judge. “I do not find that concerns in relation to the mother are any greater under COVID-19 than they were before COVID-19, based on recommendations that currently exist.”

The judge ordered that the father comply with a court order from February outlining parenting times for the couple.

Another ruling in provincial court outlined the circumstances in which a case should be deemed urgent and noted that court orders involving parenting times in a family-law case should be complied with.

“However, the parties must also be practical and exercise their common sense,” said Provincial Court Judge Wilson Lee. “A child should not be exposed to unreasonable risk but at the same time, COVID19 is not an excuse to deny a person having scheduled time with a child when there is no reasonable basis for doing so.”

The judge, who was also dealing with a case where one parent had refused to return the child to another parent, concluded that it was clearly an urgent matter and gave permission for the filing of a notice of motion for the return of the child.