In what circumstances will a court allow a disabled husband to continue to receive support for his disabled wife?
Ontario, Canada
The following excerpt is from Schonauer v. Schonauer, 1979 CanLII 1212 (ON CJ):
[17] In Mickelown v. Mickelown, supra, the parties had been separated for about 7 years and the applicant husband was disabled and on welfare. Although the court found that the wife was not able to contribute, which could have ended the matter, the court felt constrained to remove the “sword of Damocles” from the wife’s head by venturing that the husband’s needs were not the product of the marriage and that he would never succeed in getting support from her, even if her capacity to help him improved.
[18] With respect, I would suggest that matters could be improved in this regard for the wife by her seeking a divorce or by the consistent application of a “doctrine of remoteness” as discussed in Lawless v. Lawless, supra. The idea is that the passage of time after separation should tend to reduce the obligation and that certainly the obligation to support should be reduced where the need arose out of developments subsequent to separation.
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