“In Davis v. Crawford (2011 ONCA 294), the Court of Appeal has held that lump sum awards of spousal support are not to be limited to only “very unusual circumstances”. The Court of Appeal also observed that both the Family Law Act R.S.O.1990 c. F.3 and the Divorce Act R.S.C. 1985 c. 3 (2nd Supp) permit lump sum awards of spousal support to be made.
In Davis, the Court set out the advantages and disadvantages of a lump sum award of spousal support as follows (paras 67 and 68):
-
-
-
-
- The advantages of making such an award will be highly variable and case-specific. They can include but are not limited to: terminating ongoing contact or ties between the spouses for any number of reasons (for example: short-term marriage; domestic violence; second marriage with no children, etc); providing capital to meet an imeediate need on the part of a dependant spouse; ensuring adequate support will be paid in circumstances where there is a real risk of non-payment of periodic support, a lack of proper financial disclosure or where the payor has the ability to pay lump sum but not periodic support; and satisfying immediately an award of retroactive spousal support.
- Similarly, the disadvantages of such an award can include: the real possibility that the means and needs of the parties will change over time, leading to the need for a variation; the fact that the parties will be effectively deprived of the right to apply for a variation of the jump sum award; and the difficulties inherent in calculating an appropriate award of lump sum spousal support where lump sum support is awarded in place of ongoing indefinite periodic support.
-
-
-
It is also appropriate for a judge to award a lump sum spousal support where there was a high level of animosity between the parties (Racco v. Racco 2014 ONCA 330), or where it was appropriate to facilitate a ‘clean break’ between the parties (Greenberg v. Daniels (1995) 2005 CanLII 456 (ON CA), 194 O.A.C. 115 (C.A.)).”