Tag: legal services society

The end of assigning maintenance rights: What does it mean?

Community posts
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To continue assignment, contact MSDSI by June 5, 2015

By Legal Services Society
Cross-posted from the Factum

The Ministry of Social Development and Social Innovation (MSDSI) recently sent some of the people who get income or disability assistance a letter about changes to the requirement to “assign maintenance.” Some people still have questions about this change, so The Factum will try to make sense of them here.

As of September 1, 2015, child support payments will no longer be deducted from income/disability assistance payments. This is good news as parents won’t have their child support clawed back.

The old rules

Before May 1, 2015, if you were divorced or separated and getting income/disability assistance, you had to sign over your rights to maintenance (child support) payments to the ministry. This “assignment of rights” allowed the ministry to take your spouse to court and get a court order for child support. If your spouse refused to pay, the ministry could send the court order to the Family Maintenance Enforcement Program, who would collect the payments for you. Then the ministry would deduct that amount from your income/disability assistance.

The new rules

As of May 1, 2015, you don’t have to assign your maintenance rights to the ministry anymore.

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New and Revised Publications from the Legal Services Society

Community posts

By Nate Prosser (guest blogger)
Legal Services Society (Legal Aid BC)

This week saw a shake-up in family law as the new Family Law Act replaced the old Family Relations Act, and a slew of legal changes came into force. As a result of these changes, many of the family law publications produced before the act came into force are no longer legally accurate.

With this in mind, the Legal Services Society (LSS) has revised all of its family law and child protection publications. This included creating many new publications, from booklets to fact sheets and self help-guides, and revising more than 20 booklets, brochures, flow charts, and fact sheets. In addition to these, all information on the Family Law in BC website has been updated to reflect the new Family Law Act.

A list of new and revised resources can be found on the Family Law in BC website. All of the updated publications are available online and in print now (see also Families & children and Abuse & family violence in the publications section of the LSS website).

If you have any copies of these publications dated earlier than March 18, 2013, please recycle and replace them with the updated editions, as they are now incorrect.