Affidavit of Service
In a 'sole/uncontested' divorce, your spouse will have 30 days (60 if
served outside of Canada or the USA) after being served with a copy of the divorce
application to contest the divorce or make his or her own claim. The court will not know
when the 30/60 day clock starts to run until an Affidavit of Service is filed indicating when your spouse was served. When using
ezDivorce, this
should not be an issue because you should be certain that your spouse
will not contest the divorce or make his/her own claim. However,
unless you request otherwise, and
pay an additional fee ranging from $25 to $100, depending on where your
divorce was filed, the Affidavit of Service will not be filed before the
final 'set-down' material (see
www.ezdivorce.ca/process #6). If the
Affidavit of Service has not been filed with the court, your spouse will not be stopped from trying
to contest the divorce even after his or her time to do so has expired. If this
happens, you may have the Answer dismissed by the court after filing the
Affidavit of Service, however it will be a big hassle and costly. If you are certain that
your spouse will not contest the divorce, this should not be an issue. However,
it is up to you whether or not to pay the additional fee to have the Affidavit
of Service filed a.s.a.p. after service has been accomplished. Again, 99% of our
customers do not opt for this additional filing. We are just setting it out here so you are aware of
the possibility.
Change of Address for Service
Family
Law Rule 6(6) states: 'A party whose address for service changes shall
immediately serve notice of the change on the other parties and file it.'
So, if you move while the divorce is still in process, you must 'immediately
serve notice of the change' of address on your spouse and file it with the
court. You can either do this yourself (including filing the notice in
person at the court) or pay
ezDivorce
to do this for you (fee
ranges from $50 to $125 depending on the court location). While it seems
that many people ignore this Rule and wait until the divorce 'set-down' to
change their address with the court, failure to comply with Rule 6(6) could
result in serious legal/financial consequences.
Tip:
If you know for sure that you will be moving in the next few months, you may
want to use a 'care of' address (friend or family member) from the start.
Other possible additional charges:
If an
additional trip(s) to a court (other than Toronto) is/are required
due to no fault of
ezDivorce,
you will have to reimburse us for the additional fee(s) that we pay
our local court filing agent to do our filings. This could happen if
the court has lost your file (very rare but it does happen). This
could also happen if a clerk rejects a filing due to her or his
misunderstanding as to the law or rules regarding procedure. While a clerk's unlawful refusal to accept
documents is not your fault,
ezDivorce
will not
absorb the cost of having to go back to the court an additional time
to file what should have been accepted by the clerk the first time.
This cost can range from $15 to $100.
A very rare
but not unheard of occurrence is when a judge rejects something
without paying close attention to what he or she is reading. If a
supplemental affidavit that merely restates what was already stated
has to be prepared and submitted, you will have to pay for that
supplemental filing. This has only happened in a few divorces out of
the several thousand
ezDivorce
has filed.
If something
is rejected based on a mistake that
ezDivorce
made, you will
obviously not have to cover that expense.
