Parents going through a separation and a divorce will no longer have to go to family court to calculate child support.
The government of Saskatchewan is launching a new program to expand the Child Support Service aimed to help families by reducing children’s exposure to conflict.
According to justice minister and attorney-general Bronwyn Eyre, family court process can be expensive, time-consuming and complex, which could also cause additional stress to parents as well as children.
“This service aims to take away some of that financial burden and stress, allowing parents to focus on what really matters — their children,” Eyre said.
Legal director of Saskatchewan Legal Aid’s Regina city office, Tyne Hagey, has been in family law for the past eight years. She says parents disagree on the amount of child support and sometimes they need professional help with the calculation process.
“Sometimes when parents disagree about child support its only about a few hundred dollars. This is because sometimes they have their own idea about how much the other parent is earning, and how that income should be valued, or sometimes they are just misinformed about the child support process and about how it’s calculated and works,” Hagey said.
“People often turn to professional help for calculating child support. So, services like the child support calculation service are going to help parents, you know, take their incomes, compare it and save that time and get it done right away when contested in court.”
This child support service expands on the recalculation service launched in 2018 to offer a faster way to update child support amounts for existing child support orders.
“Well, as I said, it’s been in place since 2018. Part of the legislation that was passed in 2018 was about bringing in that recalculation system. And there were a number of aspects in that legislation that touched on support and the workings of the support system,” Eyre said.
“And really from 2018 to now, a sense that we could expand this then to the calculation service right off the top. And I think there’s pretty broad consensus about the need to help people, from an access to justice perspective, get around some of that that conflict which we see in family law cases.”
The recalculation portion of the service is funded by the Government of Saskatchewan to the tune of $348,000 per year. Now the program will also provide calculation services to establish child support amounts at the beginning of a separation.
The federal Department of Justice is providing financial support through the Canadian Family Justice Fund with the objective of improving access to the family justice system.
The government set up this pilot project to build financial stability for children. Parents applying for the child support decision comes at no cost. It can be done without paying legal fees, or filling out complex court forms.