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Shankar Law Office

How confidential are records submitted to the Office of the Children’s Lawyer?


So, the court appoints the Office of the Children’s Lawyer ("OCL") to help with your family case in involving children. You do the intake forms. The OCL appoints a clinical investigator to do the investigation and review various documents submitted by both parties and by collateral or by third parties related to your case.


The OCL then makes recommendations based on the various documentations, observations at the access/parenting time visits.


Finally, the OCL has a disclosure meeting and makes recommendations. But you don’t agree with those recommendations because you feel that the OCL has not reviewed the documents or the issues properly because you are certain that there are many complex issues affecting the other side that need to be shared with the court.


So what do you do?


You ask the OCL to share with you all the original documents that the other side shared with them, including medical and counselling records. The other party thinks that all those documents are confidential and will not be revealed to you.


Unfortunately the other party is wrong. As seen in the recent 2024 Superior Court of Justice case of Dhillon v Grewal, (2024 ONSC 5078 (CanLII) | Dhillon v. Grewal | CanLII), the Judge noted at paragraph 6 that:


"The OCL order states that records given to the OCL may be produced to the parties subject to the applicable procedural rules, and that they may only be used for the purposes of this litigation."


The Judge then found that these documents were relevant to assessing quality of recommendations by the OCL. The obvious assumption is that the documents would be especially useful from a trial viewpoint in cross examination of the OCL. So the judge granted the motion for disclosure of these documents.


The lesson learnt is whatever documents you are submitting to the OCL in their assessment could be shared with the opposing party based on their request/motion to the court to release such documents.


Your lawyer needs to prepare you for this process. The documents that you submit to the OCL could be used in the trial at cross examination. You can challenge the OCL about it's recommendations based on the documents submitted and the interpretation of the documents that the OCL has taken into account thus challenging the recommendations itself.


These are delicate and complex processes. At Shankar law, we try to be as thorough and systematic as possible. Our years of experience and attention to detail will hopefully help you emerge successfully. We look forward to serving you anywhere in Ontario. And particularly in the Grey Bruce Huron region. We are always here to help with your Family Law, Criminal Law, and Real Estate needs.

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