Changing Family Law Orders, Awards and Agreements Involving Spousal Support: Difference between revisions

The Court of Appeal has said that interim orders for spousal support are intended to be temporary, rough-and-ready decisions intended only to tide the parties over until a final order is made, rather than an exhaustive review of the merits of a claim for spousal support. As such, the courts often prefer to allow interim orders to stand when someone wants to change them, and someone asking to vary an interim order cannot expect to just walk into court and have the issue heard again; there must be a good reason why a change in the interim order is required. In the 1999 case ''Hama v. Werbes'', the Supreme Court said that interim order should only be varied when:

This "compelling change" in circumstances must be serious and of such importance that one or both of the parties will be severely disadvantaged unless the matter is addressed immediately. From the point of view of the spouse receiving support, the ''recipient'', a compelling change in circumstances might be: