New Amendments for the New Rules

An Order in Council came into effect on 5 May 2010 amending the published version of the new Supreme Court Family Rules. The new rules, as amended, will be in force on 1 July 2010. Many of the amendments corrected minor errors and inconsistencies in the new rules. The significant changes are these:

1. Lists of Documents are now amended to add new documents. The old way of doing things had new documents being listed in a Supplemental List of Documents, a Second Supplemental List of Documents and so forth. With this amendment there will be only one document, an Amended List of Documents, which will be updated when new documents come to light.
   
2. The Applicant's reply materials in chambers proceedings, including the application record and application record index, must now be served and filed by 4:00pm on the day which is one full day before the day set for the hearing of the application. Previously, these materials need to be served and filed by noon on the day before the hearing. Applicants now have much less time to prepare these materials.
3. The Notice of Application form now requires the Applicant to specify the date and time of the hearing of the application.
   

The Order in Council is not yet posted to the website of the Queen's Printer. I will add that link when it becomes publicly available. I have previously discussed the new rules here, here and here, and in much more detail on my website in the New Rules 101 chapter.

Update

The Order in Council amending the published form of the new rules is now available from the Attorney General's website (PDF). The changes to the family law rules are in Schedule B, in the second half of the document.