Legal Illustrations 3 - Children and Family Law

More legal illustrations available to you under a noncommercial use with attribution Creative Commons licence. [And please don't be surprised if my posts start really sliding downhill in the next few weeks.] Children Testifying [Future corporate lawyers, you don't want to be here, you want to be at this page.] This is for your notes about the new amendment to the Canada Evidence Act s. 16.1 that'll come into effect in 2006. [See Bill C-2] Making it a presumption that the testimony in court of children under 14 is valid evidence, mandating that they be required to promise to tell the truth, and forbidding asking them to swear an oath or make an affirmation and no questions like "do you know baby Jesus cries when you tell a lie?" You'll also want something to illustrate that for the protection of the child, methods like videotaped testimony may be used (see the new s. 715.1 of the Canada Evidence Act. And you can use just the red circle picture to illustrate that it is the practice in Ontario to not have children testify in custody hearings, but to have reports from social workers who have talked to the children instead. I drew this picture for Re Labbe and McCullough, (1979) 23 O.R. (2d) 536 (PCFD). The case about the musician (he might not have been a guitar player) who got his girlfriend pregnant, then left her, but wound up having to pay spousal support on top of child support even though he'd only spent a total of 6 weeks living with her and never even moved his stuff out of his parents house. While he'd been on tour, he'd stayed in touch and they'd talked about getting married, and she did look after him when he broke his hand.