Markham 810 Recognizance Lawyer

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Someone has asked a court to place you under an order that can control where you go, who you talk to and whether you keep your firearms for up to a year. No criminal charge has to be laid first. For Markham and the rest of York Region, the whole process runs through the Newmarket courthouse at 50 Eagle St. W. You are allowed to fight an 810 application, and plenty of them deserve to be fought. This page explains what you are facing before your first date, not after it.

Reviewed by Fadi Matthew Kazandji, Founding Partner, Kazandji Law · Updated July 2026 · Serving Markham & York Region

Which 810 application are you actually facing?

"810" is shorthand for a family of preventive court orders, and the first job in every one of these files is identifying which one is on your paperwork. The general version, s. 810 of the Criminal Code, lets any person lay an information before a justice if they fear on reasonable grounds that you will cause personal injury to them, to their intimate partner or child, or damage to their property, or that you will commit an intimate image offence under s. 162.1. The specialized versions have their own triggers, their own durations and, in one case, a consent requirement most people have never heard of.

Application	The fear alleged	What to know
s. 810 (general)	Personal injury to the informant, their intimate partner or child, or damage to their property, or an intimate image offence under s. 162.1	Up to 12 months. Any person can lay the information. The subject of this page.
s. 810.03 (intimate partner)	An offence that would cause personal injury to an intimate partner or a child	Up to 12 months, or up to 2 years with a prior conviction for violence against an intimate partner. Laid before a provincial court judge. Conditions can include treatment programs and electronic monitoring with the Attorney General's consent.
s. 810.1	A sexual offence against a person under 16	Up to 12 months, or up to 2 years with a qualifying prior conviction.
s. 810.2	A serious personal injury offence	Requires the consent of the Attorney General before it can proceed.

A further specialized recognizance also exists under s. 810.01. This page deals with defending the general s. 810 application. If yours arrived tangled up with an intimate partner allegation, read it together with our Markham domestic assault lawyer page, because the two tracks affect each other constantly.

What the informant has to establish

An 810 application is not a criminal charge. Nobody is alleging you committed an offence, no plea is ever entered, and the process cannot end in a conviction. What the statute requires is narrower and, handled properly, very testable. Once the information is laid, s. 810(2) directs the justice to cause both parties to appear. At the hearing, the court can only make the order if it is, in the statute's own words, satisfied by the evidence adduced that the person on whose behalf the information was laid has reasonable grounds for the fear.

Read that twice, because both halves matter. Evidence has to be adduced. A sworn information is a starting point, not proof, and at a contested hearing the informant's account gets tested through cross-examination. And the fear has to rest on reasonable grounds. It is not enough that a person honestly feels afraid. The grounds for the fear have to hold up when someone finally examines them.

If the court is satisfied, it can order you to enter into a recognizance, with or without sureties, to keep the peace and be of good behaviour for up to 12 months, with conditions attached. If it is not satisfied, the application is dismissed and you walk out with no order at all. Both outcomes happen at Newmarket every week.

How the hearing runs at 50 Eagle St. W.

Markham has no criminal courthouse of its own. An 810 application involving a Markham respondent runs through the Ontario Court of Justice at the Newmarket courthouse, 50 Eagle St. W., the OCJ location serving York Region. The information is laid before a justice there, both parties are summonsed there, and the hearing itself is held there. Many routine pre-hearing appearances can now proceed virtually, which helps with work schedules but also tempts people into treating the process casually. Resist that.

In York practice these applications arrive two ways. Sometimes a private citizen, often a neighbour, an ex-partner or a former business associate, swears the information personally. Sometimes police or the Crown channel one alongside, or instead of, a criminal charge investigated out of York Regional Police #5 District on McCowan Road, which polices Markham. The paperwork looks similar either way. The dynamics are not, and the defence approach shifts with the source.

One more piece of local geography. If you were arrested on a related charge and need a bail appearance, that happens in the same Newmarket building. Toronto splits its bail work into a dedicated bail centre across town from its case management courts. In York Region, the bail list, the 810 list and everything that follows them sit under one roof.

Treat the first appearance as the start of a defended proceeding. People who ignore an 810 summons risk a warrant and losing by default. People who show up alone and sign whatever is put in front of them give up defences they never knew existed.

Where a stated fear gets attacked

The hearing turns on the quality of the fear, so that is where defence work concentrates. A fear that can support a court order should be present, specific and reasonably grounded. A surprising number of applications fail at least one of those.

None of this means the informant is lying. Sometimes the fear is genuine but the grounds are not reasonable, and the statute requires both. The court has to be satisfied on evidence actually called in the courtroom, and a properly prepared respondent makes the court do exactly that work rather than rubber-stamping the information.

Contest, negotiate or consent: what each costs you

You have three realistic lanes, and choosing between them is strategy, not pride.

• Contest the application. Put the informant to the test, cross-examine, call your own evidence, and ask the court to dismiss. This is the right lane where the grounds are weak, the motive is suspect or the proposed conditions would do real damage to your work or family. The cost is time, and the risk is an order being made anyway.
• Negotiate the terms. Duration and conditions are argued, not automatic. A shorter order, narrower no-go zones, a carve-out for a shared workplace or a school pickup, and no weapons clause where the facts justify that are all achievable outcomes. Often this is the difference between an order you can genuinely live under and one that quietly wrecks your year.
• Consent without admitting the fear is justified. Sometimes the fastest exit is agreeing to terms you can keep, without conceding that the application had merit. That choice should still follow legal advice, because the order binds you just as tightly either way, and breaching it is a criminal charge no matter how unfair the original application felt.

What refusing to sign can cost

That is the part of this statute people find hardest to believe. An order that is not a conviction, arising from no charge, still has jail sitting behind it, both for refusing to enter it and for breaching it once entered. It deserves the same seriousness you would give a criminal prosecution, and the earlier a lawyer is involved, the more options stay open.

The first two weeks after you are served

What you do between service and the first appearance shapes the whole file. Some of it is obvious once said out loud, and almost none of it is obvious in the moment.

• Do not contact the informant. Not to explain, not to apologize, not to ask them to drop it. Every message becomes an exhibit, and the safest interpretation of your silence is the one your lawyer will argue.
• Keep every document. The application itself, texts, emails, photos and anything that shows the history between you, including material that cuts against the informant's timeline.
• Write your own timeline now. Memory fades fast. Dates, places, witnesses, what was said. This becomes the backbone of cross-examination.
• List the people who saw things. Neighbours, coworkers, family members. Witnesses who can speak to the incidents, or to the informant's motive, matter at a hearing that runs on evidence.
• Sort out your appearance logistics. Some appearances proceed virtually and some need you at 50 Eagle St. W. in person. Missing a date creates problems that have nothing to do with the merits.

And get advice early. The choice between contesting, negotiating and consenting is much easier to make well before positions harden.

Conditions that follow you around Markham

The Criminal Code does not leave conditions to the court's imagination. Some must be considered in every single case. The court is required to consider a weapons condition covering firearms, crossbows, prohibited and restricted weapons, ammunition and explosives, and if it decides not to impose one it must give reasons on the record. If you hold a PAL, hunt, or work anywhere near firearms, that clause has to be raised and argued before the order is made, not discovered after.

The court must also consider no-go conditions keeping you away from places where the protected person is regularly found, and no-contact conditions barring direct or indirect communication. It can add abstention terms for alcohol and drugs, with bodily samples on demand or at regular intervals. Sureties can be required as part of the recognizance.

Now think about what those terms mean in a commuter city like Markham. A no-go radius drawn around the wrong plaza can capture your grocery store, your gym and your child's school in a single circle. A no-contact clause with a co-parent complicates every exchange of the kids. Conditions that read reasonably in a courtroom live very differently on Highway 7 at rush hour, and getting the geography right at the hearing is half the value of having counsel there.

Life also changes over a 12 month order. The lawful adjustment valve is s. 810(4.1): either the informant or the defendant can apply to vary the conditions. What you cannot do is improvise your own exceptions, however sensible they feel in the moment. Improvised exceptions have a legal name, and it is breach.

A breach turns this into a criminal charge

Everything above happens without any criminal charge existing. That changes the moment a breach is alleged. Breaching a recognizance is its own offence under s. 811, a hybrid charge carrying up to 4 years in prison on indictment, or on summary conviction up to 2 years less a day in jail and a fine of up to $5,000. A breach file means arrest, a bail decision and a prosecution, all at the same Newmarket courthouse, and it proceeds whether or not the original application was ever fair.

Breach allegations are also where invited contact does its damage. The order binds you, not the informant. If they message you first and you reply, the reply is still contact. We cover the wider family of breach charges, including probation and bail paper breaches, on our breach of court orders in Markham page, and bail condition breaches specifically on our Markham failure to comply lawyer page.

Fighting an application is not the same as taking a deal

One distinction saves a lot of confusion, so here it is plainly. This page is about defending an 810 application someone has laid against you: a contested proceeding you can win. There is a second, completely different way people end up signing an 810 recognizance. The Crown offers a peace bond as the exit from an existing criminal charge, usually with the charge withdrawn in exchange. That is a resolution decision with its own math, its own negotiation and its own record consequences, and we built a separate page for it. If that is your situation, read our Markham peace bond lawyer page instead.

And if your matter sits in Toronto rather than York Region, the same statute plays out through different courthouses with different local practice. See our Toronto 810 recognizance lawyers page for that side of the line, or the province-wide picture on our Ontario 810 recognizance lawyers page.

What this order is on paper, and what it is not

Because no offence is charged, entering an 810 recognizance is not a conviction and involves no finding of guilt. You do not plead to anything. For most people that is the single most important fact about the whole process, and it is genuinely good news.

It is not the complete story, though. The recognizance is a live court order, and while it is in force it can surface in police databases and on some kinds of non-conviction record checks. If you have licensing, employment vetting, travel or immigration stakes, get advice about what an order would mean for you specifically before you agree to anything. The answer differs from person to person, and the time to learn it is before the order exists, not when a screening letter arrives.

And the order ends. When the term runs out, the recognizance expires and its conditions die with it. What lingers afterwards is a records question rather than a criminal record question. That distinction is worth one focused conversation with counsel on the way in, so there are no surprises on the way out.

When life changes mid-order: variation in practice

Twelve months is long enough for a job to change, a lease to end and a co-parenting schedule to be rewritten twice. Orders drafted in a courtroom rarely anticipate all of that, which is why s. 810(4.1) lets either the informant or the defendant apply to vary the conditions.

Variation applications work best when they are concrete. Not the condition is inconvenient, but rather: my new employer sits inside the no-go radius, here is the offer letter, here is the map, and here is a narrower boundary that still protects the informant completely. Courts respond to proposals that solve the protected person's concern and your problem at the same time, and counsel's job is building exactly that proposal.

Two cautions. First, until a court actually varies the order, the old terms bind you in full, even where everyone involved agrees the change is sensible. Second, never use a variation request as a channel to reopen contact. Applications move through counsel and the court, not through the person the order protects. Doing it the right way keeps a fixable problem from becoming a s. 811 charge.

Why Kazandji Law

Kazandji Law defends 810 applications and the charges that often travel with them across York Region and the GTA. Our Thornhill office at 7191 Yonge St., Suite 310 is the closest one to Markham, straight up Yonge Street, and it serves Markham and York Region clients day to day. The firm's head office is at 180 John St., Unit 320 in downtown Toronto, with additional offices in North York and Oakville.

What you get is a defence lawyer who treats an 810 hearing as a hearing rather than paperwork. The informant's grounds get tested. The conditions get argued against your real geography, your licence and your job. The refusal trap gets explained before you make any decision at the counter. Consultations are free, and the first conversation usually changes how people see their case.

This page provides general information about 810 recognizance applications in Ontario and how they proceed for Markham and York Region residents. It is not legal advice, and reading it does not create a lawyer and client relationship. The law changes and its application depends on the facts of each case. If you are facing an 810 application, a peace bond decision or a related charge, speak with a criminal defence lawyer about your situation. Kazandji Law, 180 John St., Unit 320, Toronto, ON. Call 647-588-3234.