Hiring a lawyer can be one of the best financial decisions you make—or an unexpectedly expensive one. Legal work costs money because lawyers are paid for their time, knowledge, judgment, and responsibility. However, in some cases, clients accidentally increase their legal bills simply because they don’t know how lawyers charge or what information their lawyer actually needs.

SMP Law was recently successful in defending a father’s right to have overnight parenting time with his children. In this case, the father had been accused of several criminal charges and was still in the process of defending those charges. The father had not had overnight parenting time since April 2026 and was having difficulty even having parenting time with his children as the mother wanted his time supervised.

In Ontario’s Family Law Act this refers not to who is on the title necessarily but rather to who shares in the value of the home when a relationship ends. SMP Law reviews various scenarios and how matrimonial property is impacted by the different scenarios.

As AI becomes increasingly mainstream, there is the unavoidable question of whether is it appropriate for your lawyer to use AI to draft your legal documents?

A recent Supreme Court of Canada decision has changed the law for survivors of intimate partner violence. On May 15, 2026, the decision in the case of Ahluwalia v. Ahluwalia, 2026 SCC 16 confirmed a new common law tort – the tort of intimate partner violence. This is a significant shift in the law that recognizes the gap in the current common law torts that did not recognize emotional and financial abuse, among many other types of abuse. This law will open up options for survivors of intimate partner violence for financial recognition of harms during their relationship.