Second Families – Should Support-Paying Dad Get a Break Because He Supports Seven Other Kids?
The question in Fiddler v. Fiddler was whether a husband should be allowed to pay his first wife little or no spousal support simply because he had voluntarily assumed financial responsibility for numerous children with his new partner – even though most of them were not biologically his.
The court’s answer was: “No”.
The husband and wife had been married for seven years and had a 13-year-old daughter when they split up. Almost immediately the husband moved in with another woman and they eventually had two children together. She also had four other children of her own from a prior relationship, and for whom she received no child support from the biological father. The six children all lived with the husband and the new partner in a remote Ontario location; the brood was increased to seven during the summer months only, when the husband’s 17-year-old child from yet another relationship joined them.
Although the husband the first wife agreed that he should pay child support for the daughter, they disagreed on the wife’s entitlement to spousal support. She therefore applied to the court for an order forcing the husband to pay on an interim basis pending their divorce trial.
The court examined the facts: Here, the wife had been the primary caregiver for their now-13-year-old daughter during the marriage, and had made sacrifices to allow the husband to advance his career. The husband earned about $110,000 per year; the wife earned about one-quarter of that: i.e. just under $30,000. She had advised the husband soon after their separation that she was intending to ask for spousal support, so it could not be said that he was caught off-guard.
More importantly, it was the husband’s own choice to take on the responsibility of a second family, including financial responsibility for numerous children that are not his own. His self-imposed obligation to support those children should not be a factor in considering whether the first wife should get support, nor should it be used as a reason to reduce the support to which she was otherwise entitled.
The court granted the wife’s request; however it made one concession to the husband’s situation in that – given the living expenses in his remote location and the travel costs of exercising access to their mutual child – he was allowed to pay on the low end of the range recommended by the SSAGs in all the circumstances.
For the full text of the decision, see:
Fiddler v. Fiddler (2014), 2014 ONSC 4068
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