Georgialee Lang Attorney & Arbitrator

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Occasionally I will get a call from a potential client who wants to know whether he or she has grounds to obtain an annulment. A legally valid marriage can only be terminated by a divorce, however, if a marriage was never legally valid, an annulment may be possible. Grounds for an annulment include the following: 1. Where one or both spouses do not have the capacity to marry. For example, where one spouse is already…
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Photo by Donald Tong on Pexels.com Many crime-based movies have been made about the wrongly accused and imprisoned, but the scenario plays out often in real life as well. One contributing factor continuing to draw interest from the legal profession and law enforcement is coercive police interrogation – and how it can influence a false confession by an innocent suspect. According to The Innocence Project, which focuses on the exoneration of falsely convicted felons, between…
In the Courts’ continuing efforts to utilize settlement techniques to avoid costly court proceedings, a major component of that strategy is the judicial case conference (JCC) in the BC Supreme Court. A JCC is a mandatory settlement conference where the parties and their counsel appear before a judge or master of the court to discuss the issues and attempt to settle them prior to bringing a court application. The rules provide that no court applications…
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Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.comThere are times, thankfully not too often, where judges go way too far and make orders that are well beyond precedent and practice. One such case is Warde v. Slatter Holdings Ltd. 2016 BCCA 63. When Elaine Warde and Brian Slatter separated, Ms. Warde brought a family law claim against her husband, and a company, Slatter Holdings, owned by his mother Fern Slatter. She also named Fern Slatter as a…
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An interesting case from the Appellate Division of the Supreme Court of New York was handed down this week, where the Court overturned the State Bar Association’s admission of a lawyer, who remained unnamed in the judgment. Decided and Entered: November 29, 2018_______________________________In the Matter of ANONYMOUS, anApplicant for Admission toPractice as an Attorney andCounselor at Law._______________________________D-147-18 This anonymous lawyer graduated from a Wisconsin law school in 2009 and had practiced law full-time for five…
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Calvin Livingston and Vicky Gibbons were common law spouses. Calvin died in February of 2016 leaving his estate, comprised of a modest home in Campbell River, British Columbia, valued at approximately $350,000 to his son, Graeme Livingston. However, Ms. Gibbons did receive $350,000 as the beneficiary of her spouse’s life insurance policy and a monthly pension of $3,000 per month. Ms. Gibbons brought an application to obtain a portion of her deceased husband’s estate pursuant…
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Canada is not poised to make meaningful change to its divorce and custody laws. As I mentioned here, it’s poised only to make trivial changes to the wording of existing statutes. And Barbara Kay isn’t happy about it (National Post Millennial, 11/23/18). Kay of course has for many years been a redoubtable champion of equal parenting, so, when the Canadian Parliament once again simply punts the issue, she’s right to complain. So is everyone else…
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Family law litigation is not for the faint of heart. But are delays in financial disclosure, character assassination, including allegations of parental alienation, financial mismanagement, manipulation of mental health professionals, perjury, and a general failure to act in good faith, sufficient to persuade a judge to award special costs against an allegedly unruly litigant or vary a final order regarding the division of family property? In K.M.H. v. P.S.W. 2018 BCSC 2022 the Court said…
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To tape or not to tape? That is the question. In hard-fought custody cases, litigants often have an uncontrollable urge to tape record conversations between themselves and their former partners, or conversations of their children, all in the hope that the evidence gathered will assist in their goal for custody or expanded parenting time. The problem that arises is that sometimes tape recordings are relevant and probative and often the only way to effectively buttress…
A classic problem that frequently occurs in family law disputes is whether the funds given to a married adult child are a gift or a loan. In Rivas v. Milionis 2018 ONCA 845 the Ontario Court of Appeal upheld a judge’s order that found that a mortgage placed by parents on their married daughter’s home did not secure a legitimate debt to the parents, as the monies advanced to the couple were a gift. The…