Court Declares Excuses “Ludicrous” and “Preposterous”
Family Court judges hear cases all day long, and it’s likely fair to say that they’ve “heard it all.”
More to the point, they’ve likely heard a wide array of what are (at best) improbable excuses from litigants, who are called to task for non-compliance with court orders, especially those relating to a failure to provide full and frank disclosure.
In a case called Q.X. v. J.R.L., the court dealt with the property and support disputes between a former couple who were born and raised in China, met online, and then married in Vegas a little over a year later when they learned the woman was pregnant. The marriage lasted 18 months. The court was left to untangle a complex, often-contradictory narrative from the husband in particular, about his Canadian and foreign income, investments, family businesses, and other financial information that was relevant to determining the issues between the parties. The court described some of his evidence this way:
[The husband] J.R.L. has provided no mortgage application for any of the properties he owns in British Columbia. He claims that he came to Canada when banks lent money fairly freely and it was not necessary for him to complete a mortgage application form. He has produced “loan” documents from his father, mother, and sister, but gave no evidence relating to the loan documents, and I question the validity of the documents. He provided some documents relating to his immigration to Canada, but they do not appear to be his application form, and of the documents he did disclose, it is not possible to tell if there was a declaration of income, because J.R.L. blacked out portions of the document.
J.R.L. has failed to disclose his President’s Choice Financial chequing account statements from December 2011 to April 2012. He has failed to disclose or produce any bank statements for his bank accounts in China. In particular, he has failed to disclose his Bank of China term deposit statements from April 2011 to April 2013; his Bank of China savings account statement from April 2011 to April 2013; and his China Merchant Bank statements. He makes the preposterous claim that the banks in China do not provide bank statements. He is not telling the truth because Q.X. provided her Bank of China bank statements, showing that banks in China are able to, and do provide bank statements.
Likewise, in a recent case called Farrukh v Farrukh Amin the court’s credibility assessment of the husband was short and to-the-point: It gave no credence to his proffered excuses for failing to comply with previous court orders, specifically in connection with producing documents and paying Costs previously awarded to the wife. The court started its brief ruling this way:
On the evidence before me it appears that the [husband] does not think court orders apply to him when it comes to the payment of costs and the production of documents.
First, the court took issue with the husband’s contention that he had indeed filed the financial documentation required by the Family Law Rules: It noted that the materials were simply not in the court file as they otherwise would be.
Next, it outright disbelieved him on the reason for his failure to pay Costs under a prior order:
To submit to the court that he did not know where to pay the costs is simply a ludicrous answer to the question of why he did not pay them.
The court noted that the husband’s lack of cooperation and excuses put the wife at a disadvantage, and precluded both early settlement and the court’s full determination of the issues between them.
And, to add to the husband’s legal woes, the court hit him for an additional $16,000 in costs and disbursements, for the latest hearing that his past non-cooperation and non-compliance made necessary.
For the full text of the decisions, see:
