By: Jennifer Koshan and Jonnette Watson Hamilton
PDF Version: The Right to Support for Adult Children with Disabilities
Case and Bill Commented On: Ryan v Pitchers, 2019 ABQB 19 (CanLII); Bill 28, the Family Statutes Amendment Act 2018
As Laura Buckingham noted in an ABlawg post in December 2018, Alberta’s Bill 28, the Family Statutes Amendment Act 2018, made three key amendments:
- creating legislated rules for property division for separating common-law couples;
- closing a gap in child support legislation for adult children with disabilities; and
- repealing the Married Women’s Act, RSA 2000, c M-6.
The second of these amendments was recently considered in Ryan v Pitchers, 2019 ABQB 19 (CanLII). In this case, a mother brought a constitutional challenge to the pre-amendment version of the Family Law Act, SA 2003, c F-4.5 (FLA), which did not allow disabled children of unmarried parents to obtain child support once they turned 18 and were not attending school full-time. The mother’s argument was that the definition of child in the FLA violated the equality guarantee in section 15 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. The government did not defend the case given the pending legislative amendment in Bill 28, and although the father raised constitutional counter-arguments, the mother’s claim was successful.
Although the decision may seem like a foregone conclusion, the section 15 analysis of Madam Justice Carolyn Phillips has some interesting features that we will comment on in this post.