How Much Does a Family Lawyer Cost in Ontario Canada? A Barrister Gives You His Top 5 Tips for Family Settlement Negotiations and Court Value
/There’s no question these are challenging times. But resolving family law issues remain an essential priority for many. What’s one to do with courts only functioning on a limited basis and with fewer personal resources available to fund a family lawyer?
The biggest challenge in family law might not be settling or winning your case, but having a clue about how much it’s going to cost. In this post I’ll transparently talk family lawyer fee budget strategies with you, so you can avoid family law financial traps, and make every dollar that you do have available count. Here are my top five tips for family settlement negotiations and court value, learned over my last 25 years of practice.
TIP #1 - MAKE LIBERAL USE OF THE VERY CHEAP FAMILY LAW CONSULTATION
Most family lawyers offer some kind of discounted initial consultation for clients to understand their legal rights and options, based on their particular facts. I urge you to take any lawyer up on such a deal.
Some family lawyers do free consultations. Some charge $100. Some charge $350 or $400 (we charge $350). And some charge a bit more. I’ve even heard of a few only asking for a charitable donation.
Like much in life, you tend to get what you pay for in a consultation. The more you pay, the more time you’re going to get considering your unique issues, the deeper the review of any documents you might present, and probably the more accurate will be any predictions on likely case outcomes that are offered.
For any consultation, you should expect to have a reasonable number of questions fully answered and come out of the consultation with a recommended family transition strategy that could save you a ton of money in the long run.
Because lawyers occasionally love nothing better than to disagree with each other (and oddly, they could all be right in their own way), consultations can also be a way to shop around for comparative advice. A consultation can also let you get a feel for how comfortable you might be with a given lawyer who you could be stuck with for the next few years if things get nasty.
If all the lawyers are telling you the same thing in consultations, you can be certain you don’t have a lot of options. If they’re all over the map, you should ask why.
TIP #2 - SEPARATION AGREEMENT DRAFTING IS RELATIVELY CHEAP, SO NEVER TRY TO DO IT YOURSELF
Drafting a good separation agreement, including gathering your personal and financial details, negotiating with the other side, boiling all the numbers and details down into a written document, and perhaps getting some accountant input along the way, might cost you under $5000. That’s the price of not even a good used car. And it’s a used car you may be driving for the next 40 years plus depending on how young you are at the time of the relationship split since we’re all living longer and longer.
No lawyers are getting rich off separation agreement drafting. At least none I know of. Creating a mutually agreeable separation agreement can be a fair bit of slogging back and forth, pulling in some good software, and making sure there aren’t any mistakes in the numbers.
Since a separation agreement will definitively determine the legal future of all your worldly possessions (now and quite possibly forever, since imagine if a spouse comes back 10 years later claiming you are still together and thus entitled to each other’s property), what you get to keep of your future income, and the destinies of all your children until they are at least 18, do you really want to be trusting it all to Google?
TIP #3 - GET YOUR ACT TOGETHER ON FACTS, DOCUMENTS & NUMBERS
Whether it’s a consultation, separation agreement, or court, the number one thing that’s going to burn through law firm time (and client money) in the early stages of a family case is tracking down factual details, documents and numbers. You may save yourself a small fortune by presenting your lawyer with an impeccably organized portfolio of factual narrative, indexed documents, and spreadsheet numbers, all cross-referenced.
A binder with paper, tabs, and indexes is great. An electronic searchable PDF folio is even better.
You’ll need as a start:
1. the history of the relationship (this can be very detailed);
2. the outcome you want from the separation;
3. a complete listing of all your assets at the time of the start of the relationship, at the time of the split, and now;
4. details about any children;
5. details about your and your spouse’s employment;
6. your last 3 years of income tax returns and assessments, plus your last pay stubs.
Things like bankruptcies and prior separations or divorces will complicate your past factual narrative, and are imperative for your family lawyer to know all about. Try to produce as many source documents as possible on prior bankruptcy, separation or divorce that happened any time prior to your meeting with your new lawyer, since these are crucial to your case development
TIP #4 - IF YOU’RE ALREADY IN COURT, RUSH TO TRIAL
Now I know this tip may run contrary to the let’s negotiate, let’s mediate, let’s work things out mantra. And I’m all for that too.
But either you’ve already been struggling with those out of court processes for several months (or years) before one of your pulls the trigger on court action. Or you’ll have time to give them a shot as your case progresses through court stages. No one’s saying don’t push the pause button for a couple of months to try to work things out.
But at least in Ontario, in order to get to a family trial you’ll have to survive six stages of family court:
1. Mandatory Information Program
2. First Appearance
3. Case Conference
4. Settlement Conference
5. Trial Management Conference
6. Trial
Additionally, there could be multiple settlement conferences motions sprinkled in amongst the other steps.
So how long does it take to get to a family trial? I find 3 to 4 years isn’t uncommon. That 3 to 4 years of ongoing financial, emotional and personal life upheaval constantly hanging over your head.
The solution? Make trial the goal from the start, and rush towards that goal.
This “rush to trial” is completely counter to what many lawyers - me included in the past - will usually tell you. But if trial is the goal, it’s still going to take you at least 18 months to get there. That’s lots of time to talk. If you can’t settle it in 18 months, you aren’t going to settle it. But develop a timetable to trial right from the start. That will also ensure there won’t be last-minute scrambling putting together trial evidence and legal arguments to present to the trial judge.
Most importantly, pushing right to trial could cut your trial legal bill in half. Most family trials last no more that 2 to 3 weeks. That 2 to 3 weeks is the blink of an eye compared to some six-month long criminal or civil trials, where rushing to trial should definitely NOT be the goal, as it’s the trial you’ll go broke on more commonly than the pre-trial procedures which will get you in family law.
So why do I see bills like $600,000 (!!!!) from some lawyers (not me) for all steps to the end of a family trial. Shockingly, not because of crazy hourly rates. And not because they are lying in any way about time invested. It’s simply due to horrific burns of time. Thousands of emails. Hundreds of phone calls. Many dozens of letters and court appearances and court pleadings to be drafted, served and filed. The faster to trial, the sooner you’ll stop the burn.
TIP #5 - BUDGET FOR AN APPEAL
Family appeals are WAY cheaper than family trials. So while it’s quite true you stand way better odds at trial than on appeal - in theory it’s a level playing field at trial, while in an appeal your odds are always less than 50-50 - spending double the amount as your opponent on trial preparation and execution won’t necessarily double your chances of trial success. What it will do is perhaps ensure you’re broke by the time it becomes apparent you need to file an appeal.
Appeals can often be done on a fixed fee basis, introducing far more certainty into costs than the constant burn of the billable trial hour. And while they’ll certainly take many days of preparation, they don’t burn through months of lawyer time. Usually their cost will be somewhat proportionate to the complexity of the trial.
It’s hard to estimate what percentage of trial costs an appeal will run to, but any appeal is going to be way under 50% of trial costs, and could be way under 25% of those costs, depending on how expensive the trial was.
Gordon Scott Campbell is a trial and appellate family lawyer practicing in French and English throughout Ontario. Learn more at www.nofearfamilylaw.com