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| Steve Benmor |
Without a fully accessible Unified Family Court in Toronto, separating spouses and their lawyers are too often left wandering through a procedural octagon of delay, jurisdictional confusion, crushing expense and tactical ambushes, each side circling cautiously before launching affidavits, motions and case conferences like legal haymakers.
What should be a civilized, specialized forum for resolving some of life’s most personal disputes instead risks resembling a no-holds-barred contest in which the last party standing is not the one with the stronger case, but the one with the deeper pockets, stronger stamina and greater tolerance for punishment.
Ontario spouses do not merely need better laws. They need meaningful access to the justice system that is supposed to apply to them.
For too many families in this province, separation does not begin a path toward resolution. It begins delay, jurisdictional confusion, escalating cost, emotional exhaustion and, in some cases, prolonged exposure to risk. The family justice system has become so strained that access to justice is increasingly determined not by legal merit, but by endurance, resources and luck.
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One of the great structural failures of family justice in Ontario is that family law remains split across different courts and jurisdictions. Divorce and property claims generally proceed in the Superior Court, while many parenting and child protection matters are heard in provincial family courts. The result is a system that is often bewildering even to lawyers, let alone to self-represented litigants.
This fragmented structure creates jurisdictional confusion, duplicated proceedings, increased expense and procedural inefficiency. Files may be commenced in the wrong court. Litigants may be forced to navigate more than one forum. Issues that should be addressed holistically become artificially divided. When criminal or immigration dimensions are added — as they often are in modern family cases — the burden on families becomes even heavier.
In no other area of law do we so routinely accept a system that asks vulnerable people in crisis to solve a jurisdictional puzzle before they can seek meaningful relief. When family cases are delayed, the consequences are immediate and profound. Parenting disputes remain unresolved while children live in uncertainty. Support claims linger while one spouse struggles financially. Property disputes remain frozen while legal fees consume resources that should be preserved for restructuring family life. Victims of coercion or violence remain entangled in unstable and unsafe circumstances. Delay is not neutral. Delay advantages the stronger, the wealthier, the more manipulative and the more entrenched party.
Increasing the number of family court judges is not only about family litigants. It is about restoring functional balance to the justice system as a whole. Family law is not simply about legal rights. It is about family safety, child well-being, economic vulnerability and the emotional fallout of breakdown.
The system must be designed with those realities in mind. A delayed hearing in a commercial case may be costly. A delayed hearing in a family case may be dangerous. That distinction matters. It is one reason why family justice cannot continue to be treated as merely one component of a broader court administration problem. It requires specialized infrastructure — a Unified Family Court in every court district — and sufficient judges dedicated to that work.
Unified Family Courts exist for a reason. They are designed to bring family disputes into a specialized forum with a bench experienced in family law, family-specific procedures and a more integrated approach to dispute resolution and early case management. The central benefit is simple but profound: one court, one coherent process, one specialized judicial structure for the full range of family issues.
That coherence matters. It reduces confusion. It improves predictability. It encourages earlier resolution. It better accommodates unrepresented litigants, linguistic diversity, cultural complexity and the need to hear children’s voices in decisions affecting them. It allows family matters to be handled by judges who understand not only the legislation, but the lived realities that animate family litigation.
Just as importantly, reallocating family matters into Unified Family Courts frees judicial resources in general superior and provincial courts for civil and criminal matters. In other words, expanding the family bench does not serve only family litigants. It improves the administration of justice more broadly.
We should be candid about what under-resourcing has done to family justice. It has normalized delay. It has made access to court prohibitively expensive. It has pushed more litigants into self-representation. It has weakened public confidence in the system. And it has sent a dangerous message to separating spouses and children: your crisis may be urgent to you, but it is just another file to an overwhelmed institution.
That is not justice.
Steve Benmor, B.Sc., LLB, LLM (family law), C.S., is the founder and principal lawyer of Benmor Family Law Group, a boutique matrimonial law firm in downtown Toronto. He is a certified specialist in family law and was admitted as a fellow to the prestigious International Academy of Family Lawyers. He is regularly retained as a divorce mediator, arbitrator and parenting coordinator. As a divorce mediator, he uses his 30 years of in-depth knowledge of family law, courtroom experience and expert problem-solving skills in divorce mediation to help spouses reach fair, fast and co-operative divorce settlements without the financial losses, emotional costs and lengthy delays from divorce court. Read his resumé here. He can be reached at steve@benmor.com.
The opinions expressed are those of the author and do not reflect the views of the author’s firm, its clients, Law360 Canada, LexisNexis Canada or any of its or their respective affiliates. This article is for general information purposes and is not intended to be and should not be taken as legal advice.
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