logo

Jim Singer

I have been practising law since 1989 and family law exclusively since 2003. When you retain me as your lawyer, we will establish a game plan, with a likely outcome, a timeframe to achieve that outcome, and the anticipated costs depending on how variables play out. Each family law matter I take on has a basic assumption: the client is retaining my services during a highly stressful time. Sometimes, the client may need to contact me on weekends or late at night for advice. This is par for the course. For my Law clerk Maria Kirshenblatt,
click here.


Bio

    My family law practice has developed into two specialties; obtaining child-focused results and tackling complex financial issues that arise in spousal settings. Recently, “spousal settings” has come to include common law cohabitation in addition to traditional marriage. My scope includes 30+ years of courtroom experience, with numerous successful appearances before the Ontario Court of Appeal involving landmark decisions on the implication of a Michigan divorce on child support in Ontario; sustaining spousal support; termination of spousal support; and most recently a trial decision regarding the parenting rights of a father up against a mother seeking to stigmatize his mental health.

    I have successfully argued cases on a host of other crucial and practical concerns that persons going through a relationship breakdown encounter, like choice of school, relocation of young children to British Columbia, determination of actual ownership of rental properties (in separate trials successfully arguing that my client was the beneficial owner of property in his wife’s name and in another case that my client was not the beneficial owner of property in his mother’s name), security for ongoing child and spousal support, non-dissipation orders, exclusive possession of the matrimonial home and the biggest bugaboo in family law, parental alienation. Click on the link section to read each of these reported decisions. Many of my successful decisions have themselves become precedents upon which subsequent judges have relied and decided cases before them. I know the law and have helped make it.

    Even before I turned my sole attention to family law, I took on big cases, against powerful entities and managed to change the law of Ontario. That occurred when the Ontario Court of Appeal overturned a motions judge and ruled in my client’s favour holding that the Municipal Act should be “read down” against the City of Toronto so that my client could pursue a slip and fall case.

    In a nutshell, I am not afraid to take on challenges. Despite being a sole practitioner (with the able assistance of my long-time law clerk Maria Kirshenblatt), I have developed many resources over the years to lean on when complex circumstances arise. Whether this is a colleague with whom I have previously bounced similar issues, or a business valuator (known as a “CBV” in the vernacular) or a child specialist, I am not short on resources. Occasionally, I will seek the advice of my two daughters, both of whom are family law lawyers.