Legal Research

Modernizing BC Family Law

By Nicole Garton-Jones

On July 19, 2010, the BC Attorney General released a white paper
containing draft legislation and policy proposals to significantly amend legislation in BC related to family law.

The suggested changes include the following:

- Enabling parenting coordination by agreement or court order;
- Amending the Commercial Arbitration Act to address family arbitrations;
- integrating reproductive technologies into determining a child?s legal parents;
- Replacing the terms ?custody? and ?access? with ?guardianship? and ?parenting time?;
- Defining ?guardianship? through a list of ?parental responsibilities? that can be allocated to allow for more customized parenting arrangements;
- Extending the legislative property division regime to common-law spouses who have lived together for two years in a marriage-like relationship or who are in marriage-like relationship of some permanence and have children together;
- Excluding certain types of property (e.g. pre-relationship property, gifts, and inheritances) from the pool of family property to be divided 50-50; and
- Providing that debts are subject to equal division.

Commentators have until October 8, 2010 to give feedback on the proposed legislation at www.ag.gov.bc.ca/legislation.

Full post as published by Slaw.ca on July 27, 2010 (boomark / email).