Divorcing a Canadian Roadmap

Getting a divorce can be an extremely complicated process that can take months or even years to conclude. There are typically several complex legal issues that may require resolution, including child support, child custody and property division. 

However, this can be problematic when you would rather complete the process quickly so you can move on with your life. The family court takes a thorough approach to these issues, but the downside is often that the whole process takes longer than most would like. 

Due to the often protracted nature of divorce proceedings, many spouses try to explore the possibilities of a quick divorce instead where they can wrap up the issues in good time, without harming their rights during the process. 

Are you also wondering what a quick divorce looks like and whether it is possible in your case? Here’s all you should know

A quick divorce in Canada involves going through the legal divorce process as fast as possible. While divorce in Canada can typically get lengthy, it is possible to speed up the process for a quicker resolution. 

However, you should keep in mind that how fast a divorce can proceed will depend on multiple factors, many of which may not even be in your hands. These include statutory notice periods, mandatory wait-times and administrative delays. Other factors that may operate on how fast you can get a divorce will include the issues you want the court to decide and whether you and your spouse agree on these issues. 

When spouses are able to streamline the issues and are in perfect cooperation throughout the process, then a quick divorce is possible. Some of the factors that can affect the speed of a divorce, either making it faster or slower, include: 

• Grounds of the divorce: The divorce process in Canada is governed by the Divorce Act. Under the Act, you must have a valid reason for wanting a divorce, called “grounds”. This may either be that you and your spouse have separated from each other for at least one year; your spouse has committed adultery; or that they treated you with physical or mental cruelty. In terms of establishing your case, the ground of separation for one year is the easiest to prove. 
• Presence of children: Canada and Ontario law both take the situation of kids in a marriage seriously. If you have children, the court will expect you to make satisfactory arrangements for custody and support. If you have not, or cannot agree, the court has power to “stay” the divorce, essentially suspending your divorce until an arrangement can be made. 
• Paperwork: Divorce involves a lot of paperwork. How fast you can complete the process also depends on how quickly and accurately you can complete the necessary documentation.
• Administrative delays: There are statutory and administrative delays built into the process that might affect how long you have to wait. For instance, after obtaining a divorce order, you must still wait 31 days for your divorce to be official. 

Each of these factors makes a big difference in how quickly you can complete your divorce. Of course, these factors do not apply to partners in a common-law relationship, as divorce and its process only applies to legally married couples.

Where the factors mentioned above run to the contrary, or where no effort is taken to speed them up, divorce can take a while. Generally, there are two primary types of divorce under Canadian family law. There’s the simple divorce and the joint divorce. 

Although a simple divorce sounds easy, it can take the longest to conclude. A simple divorce is started when a single spouse fills and submits a divorce application. In these situations, their spouse either doesn’t want a divorce or doesn’t agree on the important issues in the divorce. 

A simple divorce is often used where the process is expected to be contentious. The implication of this is that there will be a lot of disagreement over facts before the court, such as the income of the spouses, their treatment of the kids, who should get custody and many other issues. There will be a need to give evidence before the court, submit documents and many other procedures that can add time to the process. Overall, spouses can expect to spend close to or well over a year fighting over their divorce. 

A joint divorce is basically what it sounds like – a divorce application by both spouses. Here, there is usually agreement over the basic parts of the divorce, although this does not mean they fully agree on all the issues. They may want the court to settle certain issues such as spousal support and property division. 

Taken together, you may expect to spend between 6-7 months on a joint divorce, where there are certain issues for the court to resolve. If the issues turn fractious, it can take even longer, because the court will then need to take evidence to determine which of the spouses to believe. 

There are many reasons why a quick divorce is more attractive to couples. The divorce process itself is already fraught with emotion, and sometimes regret, as spouses contemplate life away from each other. Allowing the process to get drawn out unnecessarily prolongs the emotional stress, leading to unnecessary suffering on both sides. 

Spouses also often want to pursue a quick divorce in order to spare their kids and loved ones of the effects of a prolonged battle. The process can be very harsh on children especially who may still be struggling to understand why their parents have to separate. 

Another reason why many people want a quick divorce is to get their life back together quickly so they can move on. A difficult marriage can be hard enough on one’s career, self-confidence and hopes. A quick divorce helps ensure you can get these things behind you quickly so you can regain your confidence and hopefully begin life anew. 

People also often want to reduce the costs of their divorce to the barest minimum by concluding the process quickly. If you are asking “How can I get divorced with no money?”, a quick divorce may be your best bet. 

Forget lawyers and those daunting blank forms you get on other divorce application websites. Naked Divorce Filer uses an intuitive, step-by-step online questionnaire to ask the kinds of questions a lawyer would ask you when gathering information for your divorce application. All for a fraction of the price a lawyer will charge you.

It’s all down to the legal profession being stuck in the dark ages and failing to use modern technology to drive down costs.

Let’s use banking as an example. 30 years ago, people had to rush to banks on their lunch breaks, queue up with their paycheck and passbook and wait for a teller to take the cheque and deposit it into their account. Then they had to grab some cash to pay for gas and groceries to last the week. Nowadays, it’s amazing how banking technology has revolutionized our lives.

Here at Divorce the Smartway, we wanted a smart, simple and cost-effective way for people to get a divorce application without paying ridiculously high legal fees.

The technology exists to make the process hassle-free, and Naked Divorce Filer uses the best of it. Once you’ve completed our online questionnaire, one of our team will get to work preparing your divorce application documents to ensure your application is legally compliant and error-free.