Identifying and Addressing Legal Systems Abuse in Family Law Cases Involving Coercive Control

Please join us in welcoming Professor Janet Mosher of Osgoode Hall Law School at York University to shed light on ways the abusive patterns recognized as coercive control can manifest themselves when victims and survivors engage in legal processes. In both academic literature and reported case law, increasing attention is being paid to a phenomenon in family courts that has been given many labels: legal systems abuse, paper stalking, abusive litigation, and judicial terrorism. Notwithstanding the variation in labels, the underlying concern is the use of court proceedings to control, intimidate, harass, coerce, and/or impoverish a former spouse. Very often this form of litigation misconduct arises as part of a broader pattern of coercive and controlling behaviour, as expressly recognized in several recent court decisions In this webinar, Professor Mosher will provide an overview of the concept of “a pattern of coercive and controlling behaviour,” the form this pattern may take both pre- and post-separation, and, drawing from reported decisions, illuminate how legal processes are deployed as a tactic of coercive control in family law litigation. Identifying legal systems abuse, especially early in a proceeding, is a challenge. Courts must protect the constitutional right of access to the courts and they have a responsibility in the family law context to decide parenting on the basis of the children’s best interests, which often requires hearing and deciding as between sharply competing narratives. Yet at the same time, the failure to identify and stop legal systems abuse significantly undermines the rights and interests of the spouse who is the target of the abuse. Various measures that the courts have utilized, such as elevated costs awards and vexatious litigant orders, are meaningful but come late in the life of a lawsuit. As such, the webinar will also explore developments in other jurisdictions.

This webinar is free, but you must register.