The Ontario Supreme Court suspended the mother’s monthly payments of $ 2,241 for child support. For the older son, the support obligation ended on December 31, 2019, as the fall semester of the college he briefly attended ended in December 2019. For the younger son, this obligation ended on June 31, 2020, the end of his gap year after graduating from high school in June 2019.

From January to June 2020, the mother’s obligations were lowered to $ 1,398 a month, representing an overpayment of $ 5,058, the court said. From July 2020 to the date of the hearing on February 24 of this year, those obligations were reduced to zero, resulting in an overpayment of $ 17,928. As a result, the court found that the mother’s total overpayment as of Feb. 24 was $ 22,986.

The court found that the fact that both sons were now over the age of 18 and no longer attended school qualified as a material change in circumstances under s. 17 of the Divorce Act, which justifies the amendment to the May 2018 Provisional Assistance Ordinance based on the fact that both children were still in school.

The court accepted that both sons were entitled to take a year off from high school to decide what to do, and that reaching the age of 18 would not inevitably cause them to lose their dependent status.

However, the court found that as adults, both sons had chosen not to enroll in educational programs for the 2020-2021 school year and that the mother should not be required to pay child support for that period. Neither of the two sons qualified as children under s.2 (1) of the Divorce Act, as there were no illnesses or disabilities that prevented them from going to school or from earning a living.