Vancouver lawyer making $57,000 a month wins reduction of payments to ex-wife

Vancouver lawyer making $57,000 a month wins reduction of payments to ex-wife

By NEAL HALL | Vancouver Sun – 22 hours ago


VANCOUVER - A Vancouver lawyer making $57,000 a month recently went to court and succeeded in having his payments reduced to his ex-wife.

The lawyer, identified only as C.D. in a B.C. Supreme Court judgment, had urged the court to reduce his monthly spousal support payments to $8,500 a month this year, to be stepped down over the next three years to $5,000 a month.

Until this month, he was paying $11,500 a month to his ex-wife, A.B., plus another $49,000 a year for the educational expenses of his two children.

Justice Susan Griffin decided a more appropriate payment was $10,000 a month for the next 10 years, when the matter can be reviewed.

The judge noted that the ex-wife, a former flight attendant, did not work during the 15-year marriage and stayed home to look after the couple's two children, allowing the lawyer to work long hours and become very successful.

When the couple married in 1990, the lawyer was making $50,000 a year in Ontario.

The couple decided to move to Vancouver in 1994, where the lawyer's career took off, allowing him to earn up to $800,000 a year.

During the last three years, the lawyer has made on average $684,000, which works out to $57,000 per month.

The husband argued his ex-wife was deliberately underemployed.

The wife took an interior design course and has won awards as a "home stager" - selecting furniture and furnishing to stage homes to make them sell quickly.

She hoped to earn $15,000 to $20,000 this year, the judge pointed out.

"Her actions are inconsistent with the suggestion that she has deliberately been underemployed," the judge observed this week in a written judgment.

The judge found the wife lived a modest lifestyle in a 1919 home in North Vancouver, compared to the lifestyle of the husband, who lives in West Vancouver, has another home in Qualicum Beach, has substantial retirement savings and is earning a large income that will allow him to continue to accumulate assets and savings.

"It is very unlikely she will ever achieve self-sufficiency to a degree that overcomes the economic disadvantages of marriage or approximates the advantages the husband gained from the marriage," the judge concluded.

The judge also noted that while she saw no reason information to justify hiding the litigants' names by reducing them to initials, the husband "strongly opposed" having his name made public.

The full judgment is online at: http://bit.ly/ykLDLR

nhall@vancouversun.com