Court the only solution

Changes to the Family Support Plan in the works

May 25, 1997, By IAN HARVEY

Dear Ian:

My daughter is now 18 years old and working and not attending school I am trying without success to get the garnishee of my wages canceled by Family Support Plan.

I am not a deadbeat dad, I love my children and during the last five years I have never missed a support payment - even when they left me with $5.50 from my first week back after an injury.

I am frustrated and bitter and am now in the process of having to hire a lawyer with money that would have otherwise been spent on a summer vacation with my kids.

Doesn't the law say you don't have to pay after 18?

T.O. in Mississauga

Ahh, bureaucracy. You have run into the great gray wall known as Family Support Plan, an agency so inept and inefficient not even a year of tinkering fixed it. It now has a new name, the Family Responsibility Office and a promise to have things working by fall.

You will have to go to court to get a variance based on a change of material circumstance.

The fact that your daughter is 18 years old doesn't end the term of child support. And since your court order doesn't spell this out as terminating event" you are stuck with making the payments until another court changes things.

Even though your daughter has sent a letter attesting to her situation, her mother objects to the change and since the parties don't agree, the dispute will have to go to court.

The mother obviously feels that even though she's not in school, she's not earning enough to support herself and is still living at home.

You may not need a lawyer. Simple variances are easy to file yourself if you have had some experience with the court (and I find most divorcing couples earn a crash-course legal degree by the time their case is dealt with). Alternatively you might seek paralegal or shop around for the best price of a lawyer to handle what essentially is some paperwork.

A good price will be about $2,000 for a lawyer and about$300 through self-help service like DADS Canada (it's in the phone hook). Neither the payors nor the beneficiaries of FSP/FRO are happy with the system and as of May12 some changes may help.

Separated couples are now able to "opt-out" of the garnishee system though the penalties for non-compliance are now much more severe. My advice is to keep paying until the court determines your status.

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