The Family Responsibility Office is the agency of the Government of Ontario that is responsible for enforcing the payment of support for Ontario residents.

Provided the court order, marriage contract, cohabitation agreement, paternity agreement or separation agreement is filed with the Family Responsibility Office, the support will be enforced and collected on behalf of the recipient.

When the Family Responsibility Office receives a support order or agreement, it monitors and collects support payments by garnishing the support from an income source, such as an employer, and then sending the payments to the recipient.

On July 15, 2002, the Government of Ontario and the Government of the United States established an arrangement for the reciprocal enforcement of support orders. This new arrangement between the Family Responsibility Office in Ontario and the Federal Office of Child Support Enforcement in Washington, D.C. permits Ontario residents to have their child and spousal support orders enforced no matter where the payor resides in the United States (including American Samoa, the District of Columbia, Guam, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands.) It also enables residents from all 50 U.S. states to have their support orders enforced in Ontario.

O. Reg. 207/02, made under the Reciprocal Enforcement of Support Orders Act, amends O. Reg. 140/94 to include this new arrangement.

In the 2010 case of Dishman v. Dishman, the husband accepted an early retirement buyout from General Motors which had the effect of decreasing his income from approximately $85,000 to $38,000 per year.

The Dishmans were married for 20 years later. After they separated in 2000, a final order required Mr. Dishman to pay his wife $750 per month in spousal support.

Nine years later in 2009, when Mr. Dishman was 52 years, his employer General Motors announced that it was closing its plant where he worked for 28 years. He was offered an early retirement incentive. Mr. Dishman could have continued to work for a few more years. However, if General Motors went bankrupt before that date, then the offer would no longer be available. Mr. Dishman accepted the offer and retired on June 1, 2009.

To convince Madam Justice Nolan to terminate spousal support, Mr. Dishman explained that his pension with General Motors had already been equalized with his wife when they settled their affairs in 2001. Mrs. Dishman kept the matrimonial home. The amount owed by Mrs. Dishman to Mr. Dishman for his share of the matrimonial home was off-set by the value of Mr. Dishman’s pension at the time. In calculating the amount of Mr. Dishman’s pension at that time, the parties valued it based on a retirement age of 59 years, as opposed to the 52 years when he actually retired. Stated another way, Mrs. Dishman argued that a significant portion of her husband’s pension was not equalized at the time of the agreement or court order.

Madam Justice Nolan relied on a series of past decisions such as Moffatt v. Moffatt (2003) that established that where there is early retirement that will severely prejudice the recipient spouse, the court may assign income as though the person had not retired. The judge also considered Bullock v. Bullock (2007) which held that a support payor cannot choose to be voluntarily underemployed, whether by retirement or otherwise, and therefore avoid his or her spousal support payment obligations.

Her Honour found that Mr. Dishman’s retirement was considerably earlier than anticipated, and Mrs. Dishman had good reason to rely upon support being provided for several more years. She stated that there is no reason why Mr. Dishman might not and cannot be expected to seek new employment opportunities and that Mrs. Dishman was in need and had a limited ability to earn more income.

In conclusion, the court found that this was a long marriage, that spousal support was payable because Mrs. Dishman was in need and should not be expected to bear all of the negative financial consequences of Mr. Dishman’s early retirement and, accordingly, the spousal support payments of $750 per month were to continue until 2016.