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Jenny Kirshen secured a significant court victory in a high-conflict parenting case. The opposing parent had accused our client of alienating their teenage children and opposed the preparation of a Voice of the Child Report, claiming it would be biased and unnecessary. Despite this resistance, we successfully argued the motion and the Court ordered that the Office of the Children's Lawyer prepare a the Report. The resulting Voice of the Child Report was highly favorable to our client, with no indication of influence. This outcome reinforced our client’s position in the litigation.
In a challenging case involving questions of paternity, Jenny Kirshen achieved a favorable resolution for our client without the need for a contested court hearing. The father sought clarity regarding the paternity of a child, but the mother repeatedly refused to consent to a paternity test. To address this, we prepared and served strong, persuasive motion materials requesting the test. Our thorough and compelling approach prompted the mother to reconsider her position. Before the motion was heard, she agreed to provide consent for both herself and the child to undergo testing.
Partner, Kulbir Vaid continues to achieve great results for our clients. Strategy is all important in these cases where a combination of court pressure and appeals to reasonableness help to achieve the results that our clients deserve.
1. February 2024: We represented the maternal grandparents. These loving grandparents had enjoyed a very longstanding and exceptionally close relatonship with their grandchild. After the mother unilaterally withheld her child from the maternal grandparents in 2023, we succeeded at an interim Motion (1) to re-establish contact time on alternating weekends, and (2) to require the mother to add the grandparents on the authorized pickup/drop-off list for child’s daycare/school, and (3) to provide regular video calls.
2. September 2024: Sometimes good results can derive from persistent court actions that ultimately leave the other side with no choice but to acquiesce to our reasonable positions. Mom had without any prior notice or even hint of discord in the relationship, kidnapped the child, moving her about 1.5 hours away from the family residence. Rather than immediately apply for a return order in court, prior counsel mistakenly elected to advise this great dad to go into a collaborative law process. While we love collaborative law, this was not an appropriate course of action for this situation. Of course, before we came on the scene, nothing happened - not even basic contact with the kid. We took over the case. Strategy is key. We immediately secured some degree of father/child contact. After continuous challenges of getting this previous collaborative case before the court on an urgent basis, we finally secured an Early Triage Conference in March 2024. At that appearance, the judge agreed to schedule a Long Motion (returnable May 2024, but later adjourned to September 2024) for the immediate return of the children and for a Parenting Assessment. Thankfully, this Assessment strongly favoured our client, recommending return of the child to the jurisdiction. The settlement that we achieved: (1) required mom to immediately move back to the jurisdiction; and, (2) gave to dad equal-shared parenting time and joint decision-making.
3. October 2024; This was yet another case where the mom unilaterally fled the jurisdiction with the two children. We were not the original lawyers but after we took over the case, we secured at a Long Motion equal shared parenting time and joint decision making. But still mom would not yield and it took a very long time unfortunately to reach a final order that basically repeated the interim order. But we got that final order without a long and expensive trial. We were able to include a clause that required a Parental Coordinator to resolve disputes. Again strategy was key. We had obtained a Parenting Assessment during which time we guided our client through the process. The assessor found in favour of dad. Therefore, mom was then left with little other option but to settle on terms that we had proposed from the get go. Thanks to the activist judicial guidance at a conference, [Justice Sharma (Toronto court)], we were able to secure a fulsome deal for our client, which also included Mom vacating her trust claim against our client’s residence.
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