How family court works in Ontario, from filing to trial

Nobody plans to learn court procedure. Then you get served, or you decide to file, and suddenly it matters which courthouse takes the case, which form has to go in with the application, and what a judge can actually do at the first appearance. Most people pick all of this up in the middle of the worst year of their life. The parts that cost the most money are procedural rather than legal. Here is the sequence, in order, with the expensive mistakes marked.

The Superior Court of Justice has sole jurisdiction over divorce, division of family property, and the matrimonial home. The Ontario Court of Justice handles child protection and adoption. Both hear parenting, support, and urgent safety matters. An Ontario Court of Justice judge cannot grant you a divorce or divide a house, no matter how far along the rest of the case is there.

In 24 municipalities that split is gone, and the Family Court branch of the Superior Court hears everything on one file. Rule 1(3) of the Family Law Rules↗ names them, Durham and York among the GTA entries. Toronto, Peel and Halton are not on the list, so a Scarborough or Mississauga case sits in the split system. A divorce, an equalization payment, or exclusive possession of the matrimonial home goes to the Superior Court. If your only claims are parenting and support, either court will hear them, and the Ontario Court of Justice charges nothing to file.

Rule 5 fixes where you file: the municipality where a party lives, or, for parenting claims, where the child habitually resides. Rule 5(3) tells the clerk to refuse an application filed in the wrong place. Since March 2021 the legal terms have been decision-making responsibility and parenting time, though almost everyone still says custody. Our post on child custody and support in Ontario covers what changed.

Rule 8.1 requires each party to attend a Mandatory Information Program no later than 45 days after the case starts. It is free. One hour if you have no children, two hours if you do, delivered online or at the courthouse where the application was filed. It covers the legal process, the effect of separation on children, and the options short of court. The applicant books their own appointment, obtains the respondent's from the program, and serves notice of that appointment with the application. Consent cases are exempt, as are cases where the only claims are a divorce, costs, or the incorporation of terms already agreed.

Rule 8.1(7) is the part people miss. Until your certificate of attendance is filed, you may not take any step in the case. A respondent can still serve and file an answer, and either party can book a case conference. Everything else waits on that certificate.

A case starts with an application the clerk issues. If it makes any claim about decision-making responsibility, parenting time or contact, rule 35.1 requires a sworn affidavit in Form 35.1 with it, and rule 35.1(6) tells the clerk to refuse the filing without one.

In the Superior Court, filing an application costs $214, an answer costs $171, and placing the case on the list for hearing costs $445 later on. Section 2 of the fee regulation↗ waives all of it for claims under the Children's Law Reform Act and under the Family Law Act other than Parts I and II. A parenting and support case costs nothing to file. A divorce or a property claim does. Those figures hold until January 1, 2027, the first date the regulation's inflation adjustment can touch them.

The application goes out by special service under rule 6(3), normally a copy placed in the respondent's hands, and rule 6(4.1) says it cannot be you who does it. They then have 30 days to answer, or 60 days if served outside Canada or the United States.

Under rule 13, Form 13 covers a support claim with no property claim and Form 13.1 covers any case involving property or the matrimonial home. If the only support claim is the table amount of child support and nothing turns on property, rule 13(1.3) excuses the party making that claim from filing a statement at all. Otherwise the statement is only the start. Rule 13(3.1) also requires the income information listed in section 21 of the Federal Child Support Guidelines↗:

• Income tax returns for the three most recent taxation years, plus the notices of assessment and reassessment
• Your most recent statement of earnings, or a letter from your employer setting out your pay
• For a self-employed party, three years of business financial statements and a breakdown of amounts paid at non-arm's length
• Corporate, partnership and trust records where the party controls or holds an interest

Disclosure goes stale, too. Rule 13(12) requires an update where your last statement will be over 60 days old at a conference, 30 days at a motion, or 40 days at trial. Rule 13(15) requires you to fix a document as soon as you discover it is wrong. And rule 13(17) is the one with teeth: where a party has not served or filed something this rule required, the court may order them to produce it, and if it makes that order it shall also order that party to pay costs.

In Roberts v. Roberts, the Court of Appeal for Ontario called the duty to disclose financial information the most basic obligation in family law, immediate and ongoing, and not something the other side should need a court order to obtain. Where a party will not produce income information, section 19 of the Guidelines lets a judge impute income and set support on the figure the court thinks right. And a party who then disobeys a disclosure order runs into rule 1(8), which permits a judge to strike an application or an answer outright. That is what happened in Roberts, after three ignored orders. Rule 1(8.4) sets out what follows: no further notice, no participation, and a date set for an uncontested trial.

In the Ontario Court of Justice, rule 40(4) has the clerk set a first court date on filing, confirm that everything was served and filed, and schedule the next step. No judge decides anything about your children or your money that day.

At a Family Court site, rule 39 splits cases in two. Fast track cases, which cover most parenting and support work, get the same clerk-set first court date under rule 39(5). Standard track cases do not. An application claiming a divorce, a property division, or something arising from a family arbitration is standard track, and rule 39(8) says the clerk shall not set a court date when it is filed. Outside a Family Court site, which is where Toronto, Peel and Halton cases live, rule 41(4) says the same thing about every case.

So a divorce filed in Oshawa and a parenting case filed in Toronto both sit there until somebody schedules a conference or brings a motion. Files go quiet for months in that gap because nobody asked. Rules 39(11), 40(5) and 41(5) then have the clerk serve a notice of approaching dismissal in Form 39 if the case has not settled, been withdrawn, or been scheduled or adjourned for trial by the 365th day. From that notice you get 60 days to file a signed settlement, withdraw, set a trial date, or arrange a conference for the first available date. Let those 60 days run and the clerk signs the dismissal order without anyone appearing.

Rule 17(4) sets out the purpose: exploring settlement, separating the issues genuinely in dispute from the ones that are not, forcing out the disclosure needed to resolve support or property, and building a timetable to trial.

A conference judge can do far more than talk. Rule 17(8) lets them order disclosure and questioning, make temporary orders preserving assets or barring the destruction of documents, and, where notice was served, make a final order. Rule 17(3.1) requires the parties to confer beforehand about disclosure requests and a temporary resolution, and rule 17(3.3) lets the court postpone the conference and order costs against whoever did not. The parties who do well arrive with disclosure delivered and a written proposal a judge could sign that afternoon.

Rule 14(4) catches more people than any other rule in the book. No notice of motion or supporting evidence may even be served, and no motion may be heard, before a conference dealing with the substantive issues has been completed. The instinct after a separation is to run to court in week one. The rule says wait.

There are two ways past it. Rule 14(6) exempts whole categories outright, among them a procedural, uncomplicated or unopposed motion in Form 14B, a contempt motion, summary judgment, and any motion in a child protection case. Rule 14(4.2) is the discretionary route, and it is narrow: urgency, hardship, or another reason a conference is not required in the interest of justice. Hardship means support needed to keep shelter, food and clothing in place for a child. Urgency means safety, or an immediate risk of a child leaving the province. The province's guide to motions in family court↗ warns that a judge who finds the motion unnecessary may order you to pay the other side's costs of it.

A motion without notice is narrower still. Rule 14(12) allows one where notice is unnecessary or not reasonably possible, where a child is in immediate danger of removal from Ontario, where there is immediate danger to the health or safety of a child or of the moving party, or where serving notice would probably have serious consequences. On the two danger grounds, the delay of serving notice has to be part of what makes it dangerous. Rule 14(14) then sends the resulting order back to court, to the same judge if possible, within 14 days or on a date the court chooses. On an ordinary motion, serve six days ahead, file four days ahead, and give the clerk your confirmation in Form 14C by 2 p.m. three days ahead, because rule 14(11.1) says an unconfirmed motion will not be heard at all.

The settlement conference under rule 17(5) is where most cases end. Its purposes include narrowing the issues and, if possible, obtaining a view of how the court might decide the case, usually the most valuable hour in the file. Rule 24(12) is why the offer you make there goes in writing. A party who makes an offer, keeps it open, does not have it accepted, and then obtains an order as good as or better than the offer is entitled to costs up to the date the offer was served and full recovery of costs from that date to the end of the step. The timing is strict: at least seven days before a trial or hearing, and at least one day before a motion date. Getting the number right first is the point of our post on how spousal and child support are calculated.

If nothing settles, a trial management conference under rule 17(6) fixes how the trial runs, who testifies, and the date. Then trial. Very few families get there.

Not all of this has to happen in a courtroom, and some of the help is free. Family courts across Ontario have a Family Law Information Centre, where a coordinator explains the process and points you at services at no charge. On-site mediation costs nothing on the day your matter is scheduled for court. Off-site mediation is available any time on a sliding scale set by your income and the number of people you support, and below $60,000 a year the rate falls between $5 and $105 an hour. Family Court Support Workers assist people who have experienced domestic violence, at no cost, in every family court jurisdiction in the province. Referrals run through the 24/7 Victim Support Line at 1-888-579-2888. The province lists all of it under family justice services↗.

If child support is the only thing in dispute, you may not need a court file at all. Ontario's online Child Support Service↗ calculates or recalculates an amount and sends the result to the Family Responsibility Office for enforcement, for $80, non-refundable, with a waiver for low-income families. The limits are real. Both parents and the children have to live in Ontario, one parent has to have the children at least 60% of the time, no child can be over 17 and a half or married, and the payor's income has to fall between $12,000 and $150,000 and not come from self-employment. Shared or split parenting time, imputed income, undue hardship, or post-secondary expenses all send you back to court. And on a first calculation, the other parent can decline the service outright.

Section 7.3 of the Divorce Act↗ requires parties to try a family dispute resolution process to the extent that it is appropriate. A mediator, though, cannot compel disclosure, cannot make an order, and cannot correct a power imbalance. Where there is family violence, or income is being concealed, court is the tool that works.

Section 16(1) of the Divorce Act says the court shall consider only the best interests of the child, and section 16(2) gives primary consideration to the child's physical, emotional and psychological safety, security and well-being. The section 16(3) factors include the history of care, each parent's plans for the child, and each parent's willingness to communicate and cooperate with the other.

• Write about the child, not the other parent. Affidavits that catalogue a former partner's failings and never describe an ordinary school week read as evidence about their author.
• Bring a real schedule. Days, times, exchange locations, holidays, March break, summer, and how the child stays in touch with the other parent.
• Document the proposals you made. A parent who put a workable offer in writing and had it refused stands somewhere different from one who arrives with a grievance.
• Protect your credibility. Section 7.2 of the Divorce Act requires you to shield the child from the conflict, section 7.4 requires complete and accurate information, and section 7.6 makes you certify on the face of your application that you know those duties exist.

Your Form 35.1 affidavit is your first written parenting plan, sworn when emotions run highest. Draft it as though a judge will quote it back to you at trial, because that is what happens. Rule 35.1(7) requires you to correct it the moment you find something in it wrong or out of date.

Rule 24 was rewritten in 2025. Promptly after each step, the court now either sets the costs of that step or expressly reserves them, so the bill arrives while the case is still running. Rule 24(3) presumes a successful party is entitled to the costs of the step. Rule 24(9) says a party who fails to appear, appears unprepared, or otherwise makes a step unproductive shall have costs ordered against them, unless the court finds a reason in the interests of justice. Rule 24(10) requires full recovery, payable immediately, where a party acted in bad faith. An unreasonable position taken in September gets priced in October, again in December, and once more at the end.

Plenty of this is survivable on your own, and plenty of families should try. The points where a lawyer changes the outcome are specific: choosing the court when property and parenting claims run together, testing whether your facts really clear rule 14(4.2) before you pay for an early motion, and drafting the offer that governs costs for the rest of the case. Our family law practice starts by telling you which court your matter belongs in and what the next ninety days look like. If you have been served, or are about to file, Telesh Law Firm Professional Corp can take that look before a deadline makes the decision for you.

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This article is general information, not legal advice, and does not create a solicitor-client relationship. It is current as at its publication date and is not revised as the law changes. For advice on your specific situation, book a consultation or call 416-639-0887.

Written by

Caleesis Telesh

Founder & Principal Lawyer

LL.B. · B.A., York University · Member, Law Society of Ontario

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