I recently submitted a brief to the Newfoundland and Labrador Gender-Based Violence Task Force, asking that greater attention be given to a prevalent form of economic abuse that can continue long after a relationship ends: the weaponization of child support and the related family court processes used to implement it.
We talk about the importance of helping people leave abusive relationships. But leaving is not the end of the story. For many women, the financial consequences of an abusive relationship continue for many years after the relationship has ended.
My submission looks at three ways this can happen in relation to child support and the family court processes used to implement it:
- Income concealment: When someone hides income, fails to provide required financial disclosure, or otherwise avoids having their true income considered when child support is determined.
- Parenting-time disputes: When parenting-time claims are pursued primarily to reduce child support obligations, rather than in the best interests of the children.
- Non-payment of support: When someone who has the means to pay deliberately withholds court-ordered or agreed-upon support, leaving the other parent to absorb the financial consequences.
These behaviours are often treated as ordinary disputes between separating parents. But when they are used deliberately to control, exploit, or financially harm a former partner, they can be an incredibly damaging form of economic abuse and coercive control.
The brief puts forward recommendations in three areas:
Justice and enforcement: Improve the timeliness and effectiveness of support enforcement, introduce meaningful consequences for deliberate non-payment, and distinguish willful non-compliance from genuine inability to pay.
Equality and recognition: Explicitly recognize income concealment, support-motivated parenting-time claims, and deliberate non-payment as potential forms of economic abuse. These behaviours should not disappear into the language of routine family-law conflict.
Transparency and accountability: Improve coordination and information-sharing between the agencies involved, create earlier review mechanisms when income determination is a concern, and measure the public cost of unpaid child support.
The underlying argument is straightforward: we cannot talk about helping women break free from abusive relationships while overlooking the role of the systems they have to navigate after leaving.
Family court did not create economic abuse. But I believe that the way these common child support issues are handled can encourage it and allow it to continue unchecked, though.
These inefficient and easily exploitable processes offer an immense opportunity to make it far more possible and safe to leave an abusive situation with their financial autonomy in tact.
I hope these recommendations will contribute to a broader conversation about how Newfoundland and Labrador can better recognize and address economic abuse in the way it handles child support matters.
I prepared this brief for, and submitted it to, the NL task force for gender-based violence, but I also chose to email a copy to several members of the provincial Justice and Public Safety department as well.
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