“First, the appellant says that the trial judge made a palpable and overriding error by discounting the promissory note by 90%. The appellant says that several of the 33 factors considered by the trial judge involved irrelevant considerations, and if these are excluded, what remains could not justify the discount applied.
We do not agree with this submission.
Substantial deference is owed to the trial judge’s determinations of fact and mixed fact and law, especially in family law cases. This court will interfere “only where the fact-related aspects of the judge’s decision in a family law case exceeds a generous ambit within which reasonable disagreement is possible and is plainly wrong”: Johanson v. Hinde, 2016 ONCA 430, at para. 1.
The trial judge correctly considered the applicable law. The case law relied on by the trial judge is consistent with this court’s guidance in Zavarella v. Zavarella, 2013 ONCA 720, 117 O.R. (3d) 641, at para. 40, that the debt is to be valued based on the reasonable likelihood that it will ever be repaid.
The trial judge’s application of that law to the facts and her decision to discount the promissory note by 90% as a true reflection of the practical reality of the situation is owed substantial deference.
We also do not agree that any of the factors listed by the trial judge were irrelevant. She set out the nature of the parties’ relationship based on all the evidence and evaluated whether there was any reasonable likelihood that there would ever be a call to repay the debt. We see no basis to interfere.”