Unofficial Consolidated Divorce Act Available

There is, as yet, no official consolidation of the current Divorce Act and Bill C-78 as passed by Parliament, and I understand that one isn’t likely to be coming soon. This isn’t a problem for many, but it is a problem for me and for anyone else who produces public and professional legal education materials.

Since the changes are coming into effect on 1 July 2020, just five short months from the date of writing, I’m taking the opportunity the amendments suggest and rewriting the Clicklaw wikibook JP Boyd on Family Law from stem to stern, and, well, a consolidation would be most convenient. (“An Act to amend the Divorce Act, the Family Orders and Agreements Enforcement Assistance Act and the Garnishment, Attachment and Pension Diversion Act and to make consequential amendments to another Act” is just as long as its title, runs to some 55 pages, and is written in godawful drafter-speak.) So I made one.

Download “The New Divorce Act” from the library on my firm’s website here: https://www.boydarbitration.ca/library. Feel free to save, copy, share and reuse as you wish, without the necessity of seeking my permission.

(Clicklaw, by the way, is a fantastic project of Courthouse Libraries BC, funded by the Law Foundation of BC, that works with public legal service and advice organizations to publish plain-language information about the law. Clicklaw Wikibooks runs JP Boyd on Family Law, along with about 25 other titles, ranging from Consumer and Debt Law by the People’s Law School to the Tenant Survival Guide published by TRAC. These materials are published using Wikimedia, the same open-source platform that drives Wikipedia, WikiLeaks and a bunch of other resources you’ve heard of or used. The “wikibook” name means that these materials can be viewed online or downloaded as a book in PDF or e-reader format. Courthouse Libraries deserves a huge amount of recognition and thanks for its public legal education work.)