One of the justifications for Docket is that each side often fails to communicate prior to court. In many US States they compel settlement meetings, at the outset and/or before each court application. There would be additional rules to address family violence.

From Thomson Reuters: "In many courts, the parties must meet at the outset of a case to discuss various matters, including: a) The nature and basis of the parties' claims and defenses; b) The possibility of settling or resolving the case; and c) Discovery issues, including:
the preservation of discoverable information; and
a discovery plan. A meet and confer often saves the parties time and money by resolving issues, including how they will conduct discovery, early in the case. Most courts also require parties to meet and confer before making discovery and other motions in an attempt for parties to resolve their disputes without the need for judicial intervention."

Morning Chambers was always a place where you could get procedural direction, but it was also a place where substantive but basic matters could be dealt with too. Now we have Docket, and Docket Bypass, and I just don't see the point.

It used to be that filing deadlines ran backwards from the special chambers hearing, rather than running from the triggering date when special chambers is booked. Back then, we were able to push clients to negotiate by pointing to all of the money that they'd have to spend on us if they didn't reach a resolution. Now litigants tend to be so focused on meeting deadlines and drafting that there seems to be less negotiation during the first couple of months, and then once there's some breathing room, they've spent so much on lawyers that they seem to be more likely to want to see the decision (a sunk costs fallacy).

I understand the rationale of wanting all of the facts on the table so that lawyers can provide proper opinions to their clients, and wanting to decrease adjournments caused by late filing, but delaying the concise letter deadline, and calling them briefs again, would help to promote settlement by creating a cost which clients can avoid if they cooperate. It's also less costly to prepare the concise letter closer to the hearing, because it minimizes the number of times that we have to go through all of the materials and decisions.

This would lessen the burden on the courts, and divert families to a process that's generally much faster (which can reduce long-term conflict), can result in better decisions as the decision-maker would be experienced in family law, in a process that can be customized for the circumstances, and is generally much less expensive than trial.

If there's a dispute about who the arbitrator is, I would expect that courts would be prone to select an arbitrator with family law experience and arbitration credentials. Biases could be brought to light by pointing to consistently-problematic online reviews.

In the very long-term, this might be where family law is heading anyways: regular meetings with an arbitrator or case worker rather than litigating in the courts.

Rather than having to convert the award into a court order first. If there's an issue with the award a person can still apply to the Court for an order staying the award or varying it.

Spousal support orders end on the death of the payor, unless they specifically state that the support is binding on the debtor's estate. Lippolt v Lippolt Estate, 2015 ABQB 118 at para 92 held that a separation agreement setting out spousal support can bind the estate as long as there's an enurement clause though. Support might even still be payable if the recipient dies, which is absurd.

The issue is that if for example an agreement provides for spousal support of $3000 per month for 10 years, that's $360,000, which could be the entire estate, meaning that the former spouse could receive everything, even if there are dependent children from a new relationship.

Instead, they should be making a claim for Family Maintenance & Support against the estate. FMS claims look at the remaining property and try to find a way to fairly allocate it between all of the dependents. That way one dependent doesn't automatically get a leg up over the other dependents.

It's a common scenario: one spouse finances their legal fees by withdrawing their investments, and another spouse finances their legal fees by using income, bank account or loans from family. If they were both payors, the first spouse would have to pay increased child support, while the other would not. Similarly, where the parties sell a rental property or business to address the division of their property, one spouse may have to pay additional child support on their share of the property.

In some contexts such as high income earners, we ask whether each additional dollar would truly be used to increase the children's lifestyle especially if non-recurring, but otherwise there is no general discretion to exclude these amounts.

By limiting it to non-recurring amounts, that would exclude people who are in the business of selling assets (eg someone who flips houses). If someone is relying on their savings instead of working, that could be addressed through imputation.

The Revised User's Guide to the Spousal Support Advisory Guidelines states "Section 7 expenses must be taken into account under the with child support formula. This continues to be the single most common and most significant mistake under the SSAG. The failure to consider s. 7 contributions will inevitably lead to the payor paying too much spousal support, possibly way too much if the s. 7 expenses are substantial."

The problem is that we often don't know what those expenses will be, they change over time, and reviewing receipts and agreeing on the annual amount is often not very cost effective to negotiate. Because this is such a common error, there are many payors who are paying around half of their income to the recipient and also paying a significant majority of section 7 expenses, which isn't a fair allocation of income.

This could be easily addressed by calculating the proportionate share of section 7 expenses after spousal support is calculated. So for example if the payor has 90% of the family income prior to support, but only 40% of family income after support (as calculated by ChildView or DivorceMate), then we make their share of section 7 expenses 40%.

The only issues that would need to be addressed would be a) where section 7 expenses are so high that they mean that no or much less spousal support should be paid (eg private school, nanny, where not justified by incomes); and b) it would be more difficult for judges to determine that proportion when they're just throwing out a somewhat-arbitrary amount of spousal support in chambers, so it would be imperfect until Specials, or they could ask counsel to calculate.

We know that children generally benefit from having two very involved parents, and we know that there are scenarios where shared parenting would be dysfunctional. Courts can also be somewhat inconsistent, which likely leads to more litigation, to the detriment of children. Why not codify factors, while still leaving some discretion for unusual circumstances?

Here's an example of what that could look like:
Shared parenting shall be ordered except where:
a) Logistical hurdles such as distance, bussing, or employment schedules would make shared parenting impractical, would leave young children unattended, or would result in grossly excessive travel time for the children;
b) A parent lacks adequate accommodations for the child;
c) A parent lacks necessary skills, training, or equipment to attend to the needs of a disabled or special needs child;
d) The parents are in substantial conflict with each other, before trial or where there is also a significant disagreement on the evidence, and before parallel parenting can be properly instituted, except when the conflict is primarily the result of the unreasonable conduct of the parent seeking the majority of parenting time;
e) A parent poses a serious risk of physical, psychological, or developmental harm to a child because of their past conduct towards a child, demonstrated lack of basic parental knowledge, inability or unwillingness to follow the recommendations of a psychologist or teacher, violence, substance abuse, neglect, absence, or a mature child's resistance towards time with that parent;
f) A mature child's strong and justifiable preference to reside primarily with one parent;
g) Shared parenting for one child would result in prolonged absences from a sibling to which they have a strong connection;
h) A parent's housing or employment instability makes shared parenting an unlikely long-term arrangement;
i) A parent desires that their own parenting time be less than equal; or
j) Exceptional circumstances mean that shared parenting would not be in the best interests of the child.

Feel free to add others in the comments.