What to Expect at a Family Law Information Centre

Although deciding to get a divorce is hard, seeing one through is often much harder. For individuals that have made this decision, the next question will be how to get the appropriate advice and information about separation and divorce they need to complete the process. Your local Family law information centre can fill this gap.

Divorce often involves many complex legal issues, and if the necessary advice is not immediately sought, this may complicate the whole process. At the same time, it is not always easy to find the right lawyer immediately and in the interim, it will be necessary to receive some guidance. 

Family law information centres work to fill this gap very well. They are a branch of legal aid services provided in Canada to assist families and individuals with obtaining crucial legal advice pending when they are able to retain a lawyer. With the assistance provided by these centres, it is possible to get the necessary advice on what you should expect in your divorce. 

However, for several reasons, these centres do not provide the best solution. As I will share with you in this article, family law information centres may lead to more of a problem down the road. Although they are good, there are better alternatives. We will explore why below. 

Family law information centres (FLICs) are a part of the overall legal aid services provided by the judiciary in Canada. Legal aid is a government program that provides individuals and families with low-income access to legal representation and advice. 

While Legal Aid is publicly funded, it often operates as an independent, non-profit entity with its primary focus on providing legal service, (aka answering family law questions). Most of the time, legal aid services focus on providing legal assistance for individuals faced with serious criminal matters. However, there is some limited service provided with respect to many other legal issues, including family law and family court processes.

FLICs are not the equivalent of Legal Aid.  You can usually find the FLIC office in local courthouses, from where they assist members of the public with free legal information. They also provide help regarding issues related to divorce and separation, as well as other family law matters. Monday to Friday you can usually access the following services at FLICs: 

• Information about the family court, the divorce process
• Court forms, guides to the procedure and how to get a lawyer
• Free legal advice about your Ontario divorce – about 20 minutes of general legal information
• Or case-specific advice for those who qualify financially – Legal Aid
• Family Mediation (alternative dispute resolution) referral service 
• Access to the Mandatory Information Program (MIP)
• Information and referral to community resources and services

These services can be accessed by simply walking into any local courthouse and asking where you can find the Family Law Information Centre. However, using this service may not always be to your benefit.

The major problems with FLICs are not so much about the centres themselves but about the system in which they operate. There are mainly two problems here. First, the family law system in Canada and Ontario is fundamentally broken and FLICs serve as a gateway to the system. 

The system only encourages a superficial treatment of the deep issues that spur and underlies divorce, without providing any real benefit to the parties. Divorce is intensely emotional and a lot of the time, it is these emotions that rule over legal issues like child custody, alimony and property division. 

But since the court is one of law and not one of emotions, it cannot really do anything about these. At the end of the day, going through the family law system only means that couples give up the right and means to completely solve their own problems by themselves. And they give this up to a system that is just as incapable as they are. 

Second, even the few positives that remain in FLICs have been steadily dwindling in recent years due to sustained cuts in legal aid funding. These centres are gradually losing the resources they need to provide value, which means they have fewer lawyers and personnel that can attend to clients. 

In fact, due to the poor circumstances regarding legal aid, paid alternatives are already being introduced in courts. According to statistics, in more than half of family law cases in Canadian courts, at least one party shows up unrepresented. 

As part of moves to tackle this problem, family lawyers in Toronto started the Advice and Settlement Counsel Toronto initiative. The project allows self-represented litigants to acquire the services of family lawyers in the court premises for up to 1 hour, at a price of $200. 

But this doesn’t solve much because after your 1 hour is used up, you’re still in the same broken system and will likely have to shell out again on the next court date. Rather than continue in the system, you are better off looking at other alternatives that will provide more comprehensive solutions.