As of July 1, 2018, the Family Law Rules in Ontario have gone through some substantial changes specifically to conference and motions. These rules govern the timelines to serve and file court materials and confirmation forms, for both conferences and motions.
Timelines for Conferences and Motions
Conferences Rule 17 (13.1) - the former rules (under both Ontario Court of Justice and Superior Court of Justice) allowed the Applicant or the requesting party to serve and file their brief seven days before the conference. When counting the days, these seven days counted the weekends as per Rule 3(2) and read as follows: 2) If a rule or order provides a period of less than seven days for something to be done, Saturdays, Sundays and other days when all court offices are closed do not count as part of the period. O. Reg. 114/99, r. 3 (2).
The new rules now state that the Applicant or the requesting party has to file and serve the conference brief six days before the date of the conference. Now, this means six “business days” and you cannot count the weekends or any statutory holidays.
These newly implemented changes will definitely affect your practice as associates must be extra cautious that they do not miss any deadlines for serving and filing of conference briefs. Practices should diarize the appropriate dates as soon as they arise and factor in the correct holidays and weekends.
Motions Rule 14(11) - the former rules allowed a party to serve and file their motion material four days before the date of the motion. The responding party was then able to respond to the motion by way of a reply, by serving and filing their response two days before the motion.
The new rules put in place, have adjusted the timelines to serve and file motion materials. Now, a party may bring a motion by serving and filing the motion materials six days before the date of the motion and the responding party has to serve and file their motion materials four days before the motion. If the original party wants to respond to the reply motion, they can, but it has to be served and filed three days before the motion by 2:00 p.m.
The former rules did not have a proper timeline for the moving party to respond to the reply motion material. Instead, the court's times and resources were wasted as the moving party, as a right, would request the motion to be adjourned to a later date so that they could provide their evidence and response materials. The new rules will reduce motions from being adjourned which will, in turn, hopefully move family law files along without much delay.
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