Clicklaw Blog

The Family LawLINE is a telephone advice line, recently introduced by Legal Services Society (LSS). If you are a person with a low income experiencing a family law problem, you may be eligible for free legal advice through the Family LawLINE from a family lawyer.

Family LawLINE lawyers give brief “next step” advice about custody, access, guardianship, child/spousal support, property division, family agreements, adoption, and court procedures. For more information about the advice line, and to find out if you are eligible please visit the LSS family law website.

Two new self-help guides were added to the LSS Family Law website in October.

1. How to get a final family order in Provincial Court if you agree shows you how to get a final order for custody, access, guardianship and/or child or spousal support if both parties agree.
2. How to deal with a committal hearing (because you’ve fallen behind in your support payments) can help if you’ve been served with a summons for a committal hearing because you haven’t paid maintenance (child and/or spousal support) that you owe.

Check out LSS’s RSS feeds to keep up-to-date on what’s new in family law and on the LSS Family Law website.

(And thanks to Sandra Ramezani from LSS for submitting this article!)

HelpMap is a referral tool on Clicklaw that helps connect you to hundreds of  free legal services available in communities throughout BC. Launched in December 2009, the HelpMap is a very popular feature on the Clicklaw website.

This month, we made some improvements to the HelpMap. We’ve:

• fine tuned the search results so groups that provide legal advice, representation or advocacy are at the top of your list
• added a map on the service details page
• included a “get directions” feature on the maps, so it’s easier for you to get to legal service location

Last spring, we did some usability testing to see if the HelpMap was meeting the needs of our users and if there was anything we could do to improve it. Through usability testing and other feedback, a few things came up. Based on this, (and our budget!) we made several enhancements to make it easier for people to use.

We hope these changes will make it easier for you to use the HelpMap to find legal services in your community. Try it out, and please let us know what you think.

The HelpMap continues to grow – we’re always looking for new services to add, so if you have suggestions and the service meets our criteria and guidelines, be sure to contact us at editor@clicklaw.bc.ca.