Is a consent order enforceable if the parties cannot agree on the meaning of the agreement?
British Columbia, Canada
The following excerpt is from Burills v Ettinger, 2018 BCSC 817 (CanLII):
A question similar to the one before me on this application arose in Montpellier v. Montpellier, 2007 BCSC 1214. That case, like this one, involved a matrimonial dispute that had been resolved by way of a consent order giving effect to a settlement agreement. Following the entry of that order the parties, as in this case, were unable to agree on the meaning of a particular paragraph of the consent order. The paragraph in issue in that case involved the division of a registered retirement savings plan. The wife applied to enforce the order as she interpreted it. The husband responded that the impugned paragraph in the consent order was ambiguous. He argued that the court was functus officio such that the only way the wife could clarify the ambiguity, short of a contempt application that was bound to fail, was to commence a separate action seeking rectification of the settlement agreement and the consent order.
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