Canadian Divorce Made Easy
It was in'68 that the Canadian Parliament voted the Divorce Act into law. Every divorce in the country is governed by this federal law. This act is applicable to all the provinces in Canada. The Divorce Act underwent revision in'86 to institute guidelines for divorce as well as child and spousal support. You have to meet these guidelines, if you want get a Canadian divorce.
For any court to award a Canadian divorce, one or the other of the spouses should establish that their marriage has broken down. To do this they must have been leading separate lives, one year before the commencement of divorce proceedings. Under the Canadian divorce law, there are two valid grounds for divorce. And they are either what is termed 'marital offence' or mental or physical cruelty.
The term marital offence denotes adultery on the one side. When either one of the couple has sex with some other person, it constitutes adultery. This can occur even if the couple is living apart. However adultery is mostly hard to establish as the guilty spouse will not readily acknowledge it. As such, to go for a trial on the issue can be a waste of time and money. The couple can obtain a Canadian divorce by the simple expedient of having lived apart for one year. But if the adulterous party is ready to confess the wrong, it can hasten the divorce process to no end.
The second marital offence is all about mental or physical cruelty. When one of the parties is being mentally or physically accused, the government doesn't hold up a divorce. And physical abuse is not hard to prove when there are witnesses, photographs, police reports and the like. However, mental abuse is not all that easy to prove. A marriage breaks down because of conflicts that can make things difficult on the parties concerned. But mere conflicts are not considered sufficient grounds for divorce. To be counted as a marriage offence, they ought to demonstrate a mode of cruel behavior that had an adverse effect on the concerned spouse's mental well being. But here too it is wiser to go for a divorce after a year of separation.
In most cases, the parties take care of the custody and property issues by means of a separation agreement right at the beginning of the break down. Then they include this agreement in their divorce application after one year of separation. Actually this one year of separation set out in the Canadian divorce law is just a random period chosen by the Canadian government. This time is intended to give the couple a chance to give the marriage another shot. However the couples can reunite for as long as ninety days during the separation period. If they can't, then they will have to go on with the period of separation.
The final thing to do is to file your Canadian divorce papers before the court and a date will be decided upon for trial. Explain your case to the court at the time of trial. You are allowed to produce witness in support of the case. The judge will scrutinize the information you have submitted at the time of the trial to make certain that all legal requirements have been met with. Then the judge will arrive at a decision on any undecided issues and grants divorce which becomes final after 31 days have passed. Then you can request for a certificate of divorce that proves that you're divorced at last.
We hope you have found this article on Divorce in Alberta useful. If you have any questions, please visit us at Divorceonline.ca
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