Archives: Glossary terms

A divorce is a court order that ends a marriage legally. Sometimes, you don’t need to go to court, but at least one partner needs to fill out court paperwork to get the divorce order.

Duty counsel are private lawyers or Legal Aid Ontario staff lawyers who give legal help right away to people who appear in court that day without a lawyer if their income is low enough. They give free legal advice and can help negotiate and settle issues, but they can’t take on a whole case or represent a person at trial.

An endorsement is the written directions a judge gives you and your partner that says what you must do or not do. It is usually handwritten and put in your court file.
To make an endorsement into a court order, you or your partner prepare a document, called a draft order,

An ex parte motion, sometimes called an emergency motion, is when you bring an urgent motion without notice to your partner. This means you don’t have to serve your documents on your partner before the judge hears the motion and makes a decision. The reason for not requiring service may be because of immediate safety issues or because the delay would likely lead to something serious happening.

Most court forms that start a court process have to be issued. For example, your Application form has to be issued to start a court case. Your form is issued when the court clerk gives you a court file number and signs, dates, and applies the court seal to the upper left corner of your original form.

A parenting plan is a written agreement between parents who have separated or divorced that says how they will care for their children. For example, a parenting plan can say which parent is responsible for making decisions about their child’s dental care, how they will handle emergencies, and how much time the child will spend with each parent.

Parties are the people or organizations directly involved in a court case, contract, agreement, or other legal matter. For example, a party can be one person or a group of two or more people, a corporation, or an agency like the Family Responsibility Office or Children’s Aid Society.

A procedural order is an order for something that helps move your case along. For example, an order that has a timeline for you and your partner to exchange certain documents, or an order that gives you more time to file documents with the court.

A process server is someone who is in the business of serving or giving documents to a party involved in a court case. To find process servers in your area, look in the yellow pages or visit www.canada411.ca and search for “process server”.

To serve a document by regular service means you have to give a copy of that document to your partner or their lawyer by either:

mail
courier
document exchange
fax
email

There are rules about how to serve a document by regular service that depend on how you serve the document.