In her comments on my post about the so-called Roe v. Wade case for men, Jenny raises a number of interesting questions about what rights and responsibilities an unwed father in Canada has in regards to his unborn children when he is no longer in a relationship with the mother.

Child Support
Once a child is born, the father has an obligation to pay child support. The amount of child support is the same regardless of whether the parties were married or not or whether the child was expected or not or whether there was any fraud or deception.

Jenny asks whether a man may be required to pay child support before the child is born to cover prenatal expenses. The answer is yes: section 34(1)(h) of Ontario’s Family Law Act permits a court to order “payment of expenses in respect of a child’s prenatal care and birth”.

Spousal Support
In Ontario, unmarried couples don’t have the right to spousal support unless they fall under the definition of “spouse”. This means they must have lived together for three years or have been living in a relationship of some permanence and be the parents of a child. In other provinces the time limit is different than the three years.

However, in one case in Ontario, where a couple had only been dating 9 months – they lived separately and only slept together on weekends – an appellate judge ordered spousal support be paid to cover half of the prenatal costs the mother incurred. The judge found that this was a marriage-like relationship and so the father fell within the definition of “spouse” under the Family Law Act.

Right to Know About the Child
Jenny states quite correctly that if the mother doesn’t let the father know about the pregnancy, then the father doesn’t really have any parenting rights. There is no law to compel a mother to inform the father about a pregnancy.

Adoption
Jenny asks: “If the woman chooses to give the child up for adoption does the man not have a say – does he not have to sign away his parental rights at the same time?”

If the man doesn’t know about the child, obviously there’s not much he can do to prevent the adoption.

However, if the mother wants to give the child up for adoption and the father wants custody, the father would have a good chance of getting custody.

Abortion
A man can’t force the mother of this child to have an abortion.

Miscellaneous
There have been some suits for fraud and other creative torts in cases with facts along the line of the “Roe v. Wade for men” case. Damages claimed usually include the total amount of child support the father would be estimated to pay over the course of the child growing up. As far as I know, none of these cases have been successful in Canada.

Conclusion
Don’t have sex. No, just kidding!! But you should be aware that if a pregnancy occurs, your legal obligations are pretty close to what they’d be if you were married.

Most people involved in a family law case in Canada know that the amount of spousal support or child support that must be paid is based on income. However, income for family law purposes is not the same as income for income tax purposes.

The question that often arises is what is income for family law purposes. Often people receive income in a year that they don’t normally receive – this is known as non-recurring income. Should this be considered as income for purposes of calculating child support or spousal support?

The answer is, as always, it depends on the facts of your case. The Child Support Guidelines give judges a discretion to decide whether to include or exclude one-off payments in income. However, over time, certain patterns emerge in judges’ decisions. While they are not “rules” they can provide guidance as to your particular case.

There is a bias in the courts towards including non-recurring income in income for child support and spousal support purposes. The philosophy behind this is that if you can pay more support, you should be required to do so, as this is what’s best for the children. There’s also another guiding principle in the courts, which is that a child’s standard of living should be about the same at each parent’s household.

Some of the most common types of non-recurring income that courts deal with are:

1. RRSP Redemption. Even though RRSP redemptions are included in your income for tax purposes, a one-off RRSP redemption normally would not be considered part of your income for child support or spousal support purposes. However, if you had a pattern of cashing in a certain amount of RRSPs each year, the results might be different.

2. Stock Options. The law about including stock options in income is less clear. If you exercise stock options on a regular basis, the chances are that they will be included in your income. However, if you exercise stock options only once, and this is not part of your normal pattern of income, there are leading cases that say this should be included in income and also that say this should not be included in income. If you have a significant amount of one-off income from stock options, get a good family law lawyer and be prepared to roll the dice.

3. Severance Packages. These are normally included in income for support purposes, even if you find a job right away and so have an unusually high income in the year the severance package was paid.

4. Personal Injury Awards. Generally, if the damages you receive in a personal injury award are for pain and suffering, this does not need to be included in your income for purposes of calculating support. If the damages you receive are for loss of income, these generally do get included in income for support purposes. If you’re negotiating an out of court settlement of your personal injury suit, you can guess how you want the settlement to read.

5. Capital Gains. The treatment of this type of income is all over the map, but generally one-off capital gains are considered income for purposes of calculating support. On the other hand, generally one-off capital losses are not used to reduce income for purposes of calculating support. The most usual case where capital gains will not be included in income is where the gains are immediately re-invested. For instance, if you sell a business, and re-invest the proceeds into a new business, then generally the capital gains from the sale of your business won’t be considered as part of your income for purposes of calculating child support and spousal support.