Debtors Prison for Deadbeats: a Nuclear Bomb for women who choose divorce?

Last night I arrived in Toronto from Montreal. I did not plan to write a post, however, on my way to my first appointment this morning, while driving past Queen’s Park, I changed my mind and I took a detour to the Lakeshore and I shot some “views”, including the one attached.

The situation is this: most of us assume that if we play be the rules, we should be able to avoid our being put in jail. After all, if we work hard, act responsibly and honour our commitments, there should be no problems, right?

Sadly, history has shown there are noble causes perhaps where ultimately and in retrospect the State looks foolish or self-interested. When Cassius Clay / Mohamed Ali was put in jail for avoiding military service in the US, this represented a class / race struggle with respect military service that led to change and the objective of racial equality. There are also situations of injustice because of blatant racial biases, such as Nelson Mandela’s life in prison as a result of decisions made by discriminatory governments in South Africa trying to prolong a very unjust status quo. In these cases the State had no regard for equality or human rights and no qualms about locking up certain persons to perpetuate the self-interested agenda of the State or those who represent the State. This is how these decisions are now judged by history.

Well, this week I discovered that Canada’s judiciary may one day be seen in a way similar to how we lament the previous lack of integrity by the US and in South African governments. Because some of the worst family policy in Canada comes out of Ontario (as well as Supreme Court Justices who have the worst “discrimination ratings”) when it comes to the likelihood of women winning and men losing decisions they adjudicate, my hotel in downtown Toronto is the perfect place for me to explain why all men (even those who never foresee them being affected by a divorce) should be on alert.

This week’s Exclusive interview with Dr. Kenneth Dickie from exile in Bahamas

Did anyone else hear the exclusive radio interview with Dr. Ken Dickie on Chin Radio, 97.9 in Ottawa hosted by Ottawa lawyer and mediator Ernie Tannis? For those interested in exploring which situations in life could lead to one being wrongly incarcerated, I recommend your requesting a transcript.

In this interview, Dr. Dickie broke his silence about his family law case, following much media hysteria in recent weeks celebrating the Supreme Court’s decision about “deadbeat dads”. This was followed by Olivia Chow’s ignorant comments in the House of Commons this week blaming “deadbeats” for child poverty in Canada. Dr. Dickie finally told his side of the story. More than ever, there is no doubt in my mind term “deadbeat” is a euphemism placed in our terminology to legitimise gender biased public decision making by certain governments and the judiciary.

What’s this all about?

Dr. Ken Dickie is the Ontario plastic surgeon and alleged “deadbeat dad” who lives in the Bahamas. He was officially placed in exile two weeks ago by the Supreme Court's decision 9-0 to overturn an Ontario Court of Appeal. The Court of Appeal would not hold Dr. Dickie in contempt for not putting up $250,000 in financial security for the education of his grown children because his claims that he cannot pay had not been heard by the Court. The Supreme Court says that doesn’t matter, so now there is jurisprudence saying that matters of civil contempt when information is still missing by a respondent are now punishable by jail. This is unbelievably bold jurisprudence because matters of criminal contempt would never result in jail under similar circumstances.

Now, Dr. Dickie will be put in jail if the Canadian authorities actually get their hands on him. He has lost his passport, which prevents him from leaving the Bahamas. And, perhaps most importantly, the State has made an example out of him personally so that all Canadian men who might consider getting married and/or having children one day should be on alert that any failure to “pay up“ if one‘s marriage ends up in divorce could mean jail.

Rightly or wrongly, decisions like this should cause a decline in the number of marriages and the number of children who are born. Furthermore, because individuals do not have exclusive control over whether their marriages work or not, it might also be prudent for all married and divorced men to now practice how to prudently and defensively pick up the soap in the shower. Or at the very least to be completely safe, just make sure you never drop that soap again.

Why doesn’t Dr. Dickie not just put up the ‘freaking’ money?

Even if it is ‘way over the top’ to put people in jail for civil matters, why does Dr. Dickie just pay? Could it be true that he cannot? Also, was he always a deadbeat? Did he ever pay for his kids?

Apparently, Dr. Dickie and his ex-wife signed a separation agreement at the time of the divorce in the early 1990s that made him responsible to pay her $1.25 million dollars over 10 years plus a $120,000 educational account for the kids. Both parties had sought independent legal advice at the time.

He contends that he paid his ex wife the agreed $1.25 million and the $120K for the kids education. He also claims that after making all these payments and after the ups and downs of his plastic surgery business in both Canada (which he shut down) and now in the Bahamas, he does not have the money/ equity to secure with a bank a “guarantee” to pay in security another 250K for the future education of children.

If it has been 15 years, how old are his kids? A deal is a deal, right?

Dr. Dickie was one month away from having fulfilled that separation agreement when his wife’s legal counsel sought to re-open a ten year agreement on the eve of its completion. After receiving monies from her ex that amount to what many people don’t earn in a lifetime, Mrs. Dickie retained Toronto family divorce lawyer, Mr. Niman, who went after more money to pay for the education of Dr. Dickie’s children. By this point, his kids were all in their late teenage years and early twenties. Some of them had jobs, even though the mainstream media covering the story continues to publish pictures of Mrs. Dickie with young children leading most readers and viewers to believe Dr. Dickie left his family in the lurch.

Dr. Dickie’s lawyer, Rochelle Cantor, explains that Dr. Dickie’s children are now all in their 20s. They have been in and out of school, they all have “trust funds” set up previously by Dr. Dickie to pay for their education. They have all been close to being adults since before Mrs. Dickie sought to reopen the separation agreement - for example, at least one has taken 6 years to pursue 3 year degrees, etc; and another is travelling the world in lieu of attending school using monies from savings and a “trust fund” to fund the experience.

Mr. Niman by reputation is a lawyer who specialises “lifestyle family law“. Some call this the exclusive practice of helping wealthy, sometimes angry divorcees take their ex-husbands for everything they are worth. Because collecting legal fees on a contingency basis is not accepted practice in Canada, Mr. Niman allegedly took on Mrs. Dickie’s case pro-bono. After all, further jurisprudence in family law that would create even more incentives for women to divorce would logically help Mr. Niman’s practice. Would this be an alternative way for Mr. Niman to recover fees in the future for the time put into Mrs. Dickie’s case?

Well apparently, Mrs. Dickie also declared bankruptcy, which, if he were to choose, would have allowed Mr. Niman to write off “paper receivables” from his income tax . So, it seems Mr. Niman not only may pay less tax to Canada and Ontario by representing Mrs. Dickie, he got very valauable jurisprudence (for someone who practices this kind of law) by the Supreme Court of Canada preserving and extending the profitability of his genre of law in the future.

To top it all off, federal monies allocated to the Status of Women funding paid for Mr. Niman to take this case to the Supreme Court. This dangerous jurisprudence was funded by the Legal Education Action Fund (Leaf) which was set up in 1985 following the Charter to push for equal rights for women.

The irony is, this decision makes Canada less equal for men who are “totally exposed” if they choose to marry or to have children. Therefore, federal monies were used to put the interests of women forward at the expense of men who become divorced, which is arguably when advocacy monies become a violation of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

The “Nuclear Bomb” for Women and continued profits for the legal industry

According to Rochelle Cantor, one of Mr. Niman’s arguments to the Supreme Court in pleading for them to allow for this jurisprudence via the Dickie vs Dickie case, was that it “gives women a “nuclear weapon in matters of the family”.

Does anyone else have trouble with how this has developed? What is the real point of all of this? Is this really about poor Mrs. Dickie, who is currently working as a nurse in Alberta? Or, is this about those deprived Dickie children who are grown, who have trust funds barely depleted and who are either working or have been in an out of school this entire millennium?

Or, is this about feeding the pockets of the legal industry who have more tools to terrorise further the lives of those men who end up getting divorced, their second families and the children of second families?

After my previously posting this and this about gender bias by our judiciary, I am starting to wonder whether the politicisation of judicial appointments and the controversy surrounding this issue currently raised by the Liberals about the Conservatives does not need to be looked at more holistically. Previous judicial appointments by Liberal governments are failing it seems and are no better than the anticipated results from the current process proposed by the Conservatives to select judges.

If judges individually or collectively make decisions while on the bench implicitly or explicitly because of their own preferences, way of viewing the world, or a subliminal desire to indirectly facilitate more future business to the legal industry at the expense of gender equality, human rights and the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, the whole system (as well as those currently presiding) requires a complete overhaul.