Thornhill Child Support Lawyer
Child support is calculated, not negotiated. The table amount of child support comes from two numbers, the paying parent’s gross annual income and how many children are involved, and a judge applies the same figure a calculator would. That is why most support fights are not really about support at all. They are about income.
The second thing to know is that the money belongs to the child, not to either parent. Parents cannot trade it away, and a clause in a separation agreement waiving support is generally unenforceable. You also cannot stop paying because you are being denied parenting time, and you cannot withhold the children because payments stopped. Courts treat those as separate obligations and take a dim view of anyone linking them.
The tables themselves changed on October 1, 2025, which most people have not caught up with. If you are working from an older number, it may no longer be the right one. A Thornhill Child Support Lawyer can tell you in a single call whether your figure still holds and whether it is worth doing anything about it.
How Is Child Support Calculated in Ontario?
By formula. The Federal Child Support Guidelines set a table amount based on the payor’s gross annual income and the number of children, and that base figure is the starting point for almost every case.
Two statutes can apply, though the numbers work out the same way. For married or divorcing parents the Divorce Act and the federal Guidelines govern. For unmarried parents the Family Law Act and Ontario’s own regulation apply, and the child support guidelines in Ontario mirror the federal tables closely enough that the practical outcome rarely differs. Support is owed regardless of whether the parents were married, lived common law, or were never together at all.
Income is where the real work sits. For a parent on a salary the figure is usually obvious, and line 15000 of the tax return settles it. The complexities of determining income arrive with anyone self employed, where a filed return is frequently a poor reflection of what is actually available. Business expenses run through a corporation, retained earnings, cash income, and dividends all have to be looked at. Under section 19 of the Guidelines, a court can impute income where a parent is intentionally underemployed, fails to disclose, or diverts money through a company. That section is the reason full financial disclosure matters more than argument.
What Changed With the Child Support Tables in October 2025?
New federal tables took effect on October 1, 2025, replacing the 2017 tables that had been in use for years. Notices of Calculation and Recalculation issued by Ontario’s Child Support Service on or after that date apply the 2025 figures.
Nothing recalculates itself, and this is the part people miss. An order or agreement made before October 1, 2025 keeps its existing amount until someone asks for a change. The new tables do not automatically flow through to your file, and neither the court nor the Family Responsibility Office will adjust anything on its own.
So the question worth asking is whether the difference is large enough to be worth pursuing. Under section 14 of the Guidelines, where the current amount came from a table, a change in circumstances means any change that would produce a different table figure. For some families that is a modest monthly shift and not worth the effort. For others, particularly where the payor’s income has also moved since the order, it adds up quickly.
What Are Section 7 Expenses and Who Pays Them?
Extra costs on top of the table amount, shared in proportion to each parent’s income rather than split down the middle. Section 7 of the Guidelines calls them special or extraordinary expenses.
The categories are narrower than most parents assume:
- Childcare costs that are necessary because the receiving parent works, studies, or is ill.
- The portion of medical and dental insurance premiums attributable to the child.
- Health related expenses over $100 a year not covered by insurance, which is where orthodontics, therapy, and prescription glasses usually land.
- Extraordinary expenses for primary or secondary school, or for programs meeting the child’s particular needs.
- Post secondary education expenses, which frequently continue past a child’s eighteenth birthday.
- Extraordinary expenses for extracurricular activities, and this is the one that generates the most argument, because ordinary activities are already covered by the table amount.
The word extraordinary is doing real work in that list. Hockey at a competitive level with travel is a different consideration from community soccer, and the test looks at whether the expense is reasonable given both parents’ incomes and the family’s spending pattern before separation. Post-secondary education is the category that runs longest and costs most, and it is worth agreeing how it will be handled before the eldest child reaches Grade 12. Ensuring fair sharing of these costs is mostly a drafting problem. Sort the formula out in writing, in advance, using the children’s actual expenses rather than a round number, and you avoid a fight every time a receipt appears.
Does Support Change If Parenting Time Is Shared?
Only once a threshold is crossed. Where a parent has the children at least 40 percent of the time over the course of a year, section 9 of the Guidelines applies and the calculation becomes discretionary rather than mechanical.
That does not mean support drops to zero, and it does not mean it halves. The Supreme Court addressed this in Contino v. Leonelli-Contino, 2005 SCC 63, holding that a simple set off of the two table amounts is a starting point rather than an answer. The court also has to consider the increased costs of shared arrangements and the actual circumstances of each household, since running two homes for the same children costs more than running one.
Terminology causes confusion here. People still say custody and access, and many older orders use sole custody or joint custody language, but the Divorce Act now speaks of decision-making responsibility and parenting time. Who gets to make decisions about school and medical care is a separate question from how the days are divided, and only the second one changes the support calculation. A child custody dispute is decided on the best interests of the child; support is decided on income and overnights. The 40 percent figure gets counted carefully, and it is contested more often than any other number in this area. Overnights are the usual measure, though not the only one, and parents who negotiate parenting schedules with one eye on the threshold tend to find courts unimpressed.
What Does a Thornhill Child Support Lawyer Do When Income Is Hidden?
Digs into the disclosure and asks the court to impute a realistic figure. A Thornhill Child Support Lawyer starts with the tax returns and notices of assessment, then works outward to the material that tax returns do not show.
The usual signals are familiar: a self employed parent reporting an income that could not support their own lifestyle, a corporation retaining earnings that could reasonably be paid out, personal expenses flowing through a business, or income that arrives in cash. The disclosure work needed to uncover hidden assets is unglamorous and it is where these files are won, since an asset that never appears on a statement cannot be argued about. Section 21 of the Guidelines requires corporate financial statements from a parent who controls a company, and section 23 lets a court draw an adverse inference where disclosure is not produced.
Imputing income is not a punishment, it is a correction. The question a judge asks is what this parent could reasonably earn or has available, not what a filed return happens to say. Getting that number right early matters more than almost anything else in the file, because every other figure, including the table amount and the section 7 sharing ratio, is calculated from it.
Where Does a Thornhill Child Support Lawyer File Your Case?
At 50 Eagle Street West in Newmarket, the Family Court branch of the Superior Court of Justice serving all of York Region. Both the Vaughan side of Thornhill west of Yonge Street and the Markham side east of it go there, as do files from the rest of Vaughan and Markham.
York Region’s unified Family Court matters here more than on most family issues. In much of Ontario, including Toronto, support can be dealt with in the Ontario Court of Justice while divorce and property go to the Superior Court, which means parents sometimes run parallel proceedings or file in the wrong place. Newmarket handles support, parenting, divorce, and property in one court, so a support claim can sit alongside everything else rather than being carved off. A couple living a few streets south of Steeles Avenue does not get that.
The legal process at that courthouse follows a set order. A first appearance or case conference, then settlement conferences aimed at resolving the issues without a hearing, then a motion or trial only if those fail. Most support matters end at the conference stage. Anyone in Peel Region files at Brampton instead, so timelines quoted for the rest of the GTA will not match what happens here. There is also a route that avoids court entirely. Ontario’s Child Support Service can set up or update a support amount online, issuing a Notice of Calculation or Recalculation without anyone attending Newmarket. It works well for straightforward employment income and poorly where income is disputed or a business is involved, which is exactly when a lawyer is worth the cost.
What Happens If Child Support Is Not Paid?
The Family Responsibility Office takes over. Once an order or a filed agreement is registered with it, the FRO collects and enforces child support payments in Ontario without either parent going back to court for each step.
Its powers are broad, and they escalate. The obligation it enforces is whatever the court order says, so a payment schedule agreed privately between parents carries no weight with it. Support can be deducted directly from wages, funds seized from bank accounts, liens registered against property, defaults reported to credit bureaus, driver’s licences suspended, and federal tools used to affect passports. Administrative fees are added to arrears when enforcement action is taken.
Two things are worth understanding clearly, because they cause most of the damage:
- The FRO enforces, it does not recalculate. It will keep collecting the ordered amount after a job loss, and arrears keep accruing at the full figure until a court changes the order. Doing nothing after your income drops is the single most expensive mistake in this area.
- Filing a motion to change does not by itself stop a licence suspension. A payor served with a notice of intention to suspend generally has to pay the arrears, negotiate a voluntary arrears payment schedule with the FRO, or obtain a refraining order from the court, which requires its own motion and financial disclosure.
One more trap. Paying the other parent directly while the FRO is enforcing often means those payments never appear in the FRO’s records, and the arrears balance stands. Pay through the FRO once it is involved.
Can Support Be Changed or Claimed for Past Years?
Both. Support is variable when circumstances change, and it can be ordered retroactively for periods already past.
A variation follows section 14 of the Guidelines: for a table amount, any change that would produce a different figure qualifies. Where both parents agree, an uncontested change can be filed on consent without a hearing, and negotiation or mediation will usually resolve it faster and cheaper than a contested motion. A negotiated resolution also holds better afterwards, because nobody feels a number was imposed on them. A raise, a job loss, a child aging out, a change in parenting arrangements. The critical point is timing, because an order stands until it is changed, and courts are generally unsympathetic to a payor who waited two years before asking. A Thornhill Child Support Lawyer will usually push to get the motion filed the month the income changes, not the year after.
Retroactive claims run the other way. In D.B.S. v. S.R.G., 2006 SCC 37, the Supreme Court set out the framework, weighing the reason for the recipient’s delay, the payor’s conduct including any blameworthy behaviour such as concealing income increases, the child’s circumstances, and any hardship a retroactive award would cause. The Court went further in Michel v. Graydon, 2020 SCC 24, confirming that a retroactive claim can be brought even after the child is no longer a child of the marriage. A parent who quietly stopped disclosing raises for years should not assume the passage of time has protected them.
What Should You Do Right Now?
Get the income evidence together, then get advice before you agree to a number. Most people who overpay or underclaim did so because they settled on a figure at the kitchen table before anyone had checked it.
- Collect three years of tax returns and notices of assessment for both parents, plus recent pay statements and, where a business is involved, corporate financial statements.
- Write down the date of separation and the parenting schedule as actually followed, counting overnights honestly.
- Do not stop paying because parenting time is being withheld, and do not withhold the children because payment stopped. Both damage your position.
- Do not rely on a handshake variation. Reduce any agreed change to writing and file it, or the old order remains the one the FRO enforces.
- Get independent legal advice before signing a separation agreement or any domestic contract dealing with support, and disclose your income fully when you do. Agreements are set aside for incomplete disclosure more often than for anything else.
- Where there is domestic violence or a child is at risk, treat it as urgent and separate from the money. Support can wait a week; safety cannot.
- Keep receipts for section 7 expenses as you go, rather than assembling them a year later.
How We Handle Support Files for Thornhill Families
You get one lawyer on the file and a realistic number early rather than an optimistic one. We are a family legal practice in Thornhill with a criminal side in the same office, which matters when a domestic charge and a support claim are running together and the release conditions affect the parenting schedule.
Most of the value in a support file is in the disclosure work and the arithmetic, not in courtroom argument. A child support lawyer in Thornhill who has actually run the numbers can usually tell you within a first meeting whether your case is a straightforward table calculation, a section 9 shared parenting problem, or an income imputation fight, and those three take very different amounts of work and money.
We serve Thornhill families across York Region, and our family law services cover the connected issues rather than support alone: parenting arrangements, child custody questions, spousal support, and equalization of property where a marriage is ending. Support rarely arrives on its own, and treating it in isolation is how people end up settling one issue in a way that damages another.
What to look for when you are choosing anyone for this work. Experienced child support lawyers will quote you differently depending on whether income is agreed, and they will say why. Ask whether the firm is a professional corporation, an LLP, or a sole practitioner, and confirm it is licensed by the Law Society of Ontario. Experienced family counsel should be able to explain the section 7 expenses formula in plain terms in the first meeting, and experienced lawyers in this area will tell you when litigation is not worth what it will cost. We provide legal advice on that basis rather than opening a file for its own sake.
Where the Child Support Service route will do the job, we say so rather than opening a file. Free assistance is also available at the Family Law Information Centre in the courthouse for people who mainly need to understand the forms. Where income is being hidden or a business is involved, that route will not help you, and pursuing it wastes months. Guidance on which situation you are in is the point of the first consultation, and it is the question a Thornhill Child Support Lawyer should answer before quoting you anything. You should not have to navigate a family law matter while also paying to find out something a first meeting could have told you.
Frequently Asked Questions
How much is child support in Ontario?
It depends on the paying parent’s gross annual income and the number of children, set by the Federal Child Support Tables. The 2025 tables took effect on October 1, 2025 and apply to new calculations. Special or extraordinary expenses under section 7, such as child care and orthodontics, are added on top and shared proportionally to income.
Where do Thornhill parents deal with a child support case?
At the Family Court branch of the Superior Court of Justice, 50 Eagle Street West in Newmarket, which serves all of York Region. Both sides of Thornhill file there. Because Newmarket is a unified Family Court, support can be dealt with alongside parenting, property, and divorce in one proceeding.
Can parents agree to waive child support?
Generally no. Child support belongs to the child rather than to either parent, so a clause purporting to waive it is usually unenforceable and a court can order support despite it. Parents can agree on an amount, but a figure well below the table amount needs a proper explanation to survive review.
Does child support stop when a child turns 18?
Not automatically. Support commonly continues where an adult child remains dependent because of full time education or a disability, and post-secondary education is the usual reason. For post secondary students, the court can order the table amount or a different figure that reflects the child’s own resources and the actual cost of the program.
What happens if I lose my job and cannot pay?
Act immediately. The Family Responsibility Office cannot lower the amount, and arrears accrue at the full ordered figure until a court changes it. Bring a motion to change as soon as your income drops, since courts rarely backdate relief for a payor who waited, and delay is treated as a choice.
Can I claim child support for past years?
Often yes. Under D.B.S. v. S.R.G., 2006 SCC 37, courts weigh the reason for delay, the payor’s conduct, the child’s circumstances, and any resulting hardship. Michel v. Graydon, 2020 SCC 24 confirmed a retroactive claim can proceed even after the child is no longer a child of the marriage.
Get the Number Checked Before You Agree to It
Call a Thornhill Child Support Lawyer before you settle on a figure. Once an amount is written into an agreement and filed, changing it means a motion, evidence, and time, and the FRO will enforce the old number the entire while.
When you phone, we will ask what each parent earns, how many children there are, how the parenting schedule actually runs, and whether anything is already in place. From there we can usually tell you what the table figure should be, whether section 7 expenses are being handled properly, and whether your situation needs a court at all. Everything you tell us is protected by solicitor-client privilege whether or not you retain us, and the first conversation is free.
Thornhill: 647-697-5975. Toronto: 647-588-3234. Reach us through our contact page, or come to the office at 7191 Yonge Street, Suite 310, Thornhill, Ontario L3T 0C4, a short drive from Vaughan, Markham, and Richmond Hill. For how family matters run at Newmarket generally, see our Thornhill family lawyer page, and our child support lawyer Ontario page covers the province wide picture. Where support is being settled as part of ending the marriage, our Thornhill divorce lawyer page explains why a judge can hold up a divorce until support is sorted, and our spousal support lawyer Ontario page deals with the very different test that applies between adults.
Talk it through with a lawyer today. No cost, no obligation, and the conversation stays confidential.