It is an important read for all of those counsel that practice family law in Ontario and deal with spousal support cases.
The Court reviewed the trial decision on spousal support including the time-limited nature of the Order, failing to take into account the Spousal Support Advisory Guideline (SSAG), not making the award of support retroactive to the interim order and reducing the quantum of support on account of the husband's obligations to his second family.
There is a very good review in this case of the principles of spousal support including : (1) compensatory support; (2) needs-based support; (3) time limited versus indefinite support: (4) review Orders and their scope and appropriateness; and (5) most importantly the applicability of the SSAG.
It now appears law in Ontario to use the SSAG as the starting point in the normal, run-of-the-mill spousal support case. All practitioners are well advised to get the software which allows for running the calculations as you can bet your bottom dollar that the opposing counsel will very likely have their numbers. It would in this writer's opinion tend towards negligence if one is not running the numbers early on in a case to see the client's exposure to pay or the recipient's spouses entitlement.
The Court does advise that the SSAGs are not appropriate in every case and provides a whole host of situations when they would not apply. But for the most part, the Court adopts that the SSAGs provide an appropriate range so as to provide stability and predictability of support awards that are in line with the jurisprudence in Ontario and the Divorce Act.
On the one hand the Court of Appeal in Fisher makes the road way easier for family law lawyers; but on the other hand, if the calculations are not really apt for the situation at hand, it could be more difficult to convince the bench to move away from the SSAG in the circumstance.
I would appreciate anyone's comments on their experience with the SSAG.
The Fisher case may be found at
http://www.ontariocourts.on.ca/decisions/2008/january/2008ONCA0011.pdf
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