Legal education: Understanding the law before you negotiate

The best decisions are informed ones. The What is the Law™ Seminar gives both spouses the same unbiased legal knowledge before negotiation begins.

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Legal Education

Most people going through a divorce consult a family lawyer early in the process. They sit down, tell their story and describe what they want, and the lawyer tells them how they're going to fight for it. It feels reassuring. It feels like having someone in your corner.

The problem is that exactly the same thing is happening in another office, with your spouse. Their lawyers are also building a case, telling them what they may be entitled to and how they are going to fight for it. Neither lawyer has much incentive to share the reality, which is that family law will determine the vast majority of the outcome regardless of what you want. The goalpost for what a court would award in any given situation is much narrower than most people realize.

Fairway's What is the Law™ Seminar gives both spouses something neither of those individual lawyer meetings provides: a clear, neutral, unbiased education on what Canadian family law actually says.

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What the seminar covers

The What is the Law™ Seminar follows Financial Disclosure and is educational, not advisory. Delivered by Fairway's in-house legal team before any financial division conversations begin, it explains what the law says, and what that means in practical terms for somebody in your situation. That includes:

Property division
Spousal support
Child support
Parenting arrangements

The seminar covers the legal framework that applies to property division in your province: what is included in the marital estate, how pre-marriage assets and inheritances are typically treated, and what factors influence how property is divided between spouses.

It covers spousal support: the criteria that establish entitlement, the factors that determine amount and duration, and how family law approaches situations where one spouse has significantly lower income or gave up career advancement during the marriage.

Where children are involved, the seminar addresses child support: how the federal guidelines work, what table amounts apply based on income, and how section 7 expenses are handled.

It covers the legal framework for parenting arrangements, including how decision-making and parenting time are approached under Canadian law, and what parenting after separation typically looks like in practice.

The goal is legal literacy, not legal strategy. Both spouses get the legal information they need from the same neutral source, at the same time. By the end of the seminar, both spouses understand the rules of the game.

Why this changes everything

There is a question that almost never gets asked in the traditional system: “if my spouse sat down with you and told their version of events, what would you tell them?”. That question matters because the best way to negotiate anything is to understand the other person's position.

In a divorce, family law defines the boundaries of both positions. When both spouses understand those boundaries before they begin negotiating, the conversation changes entirely. Issues that seemed non-negotiable become more flexible. Fears that seemed insurmountable lose some of their power. And both parties can focus on the real question: within the range that the law provides, what outcome actually works for both of us?

The What is the Law™ Seminar is not designed to create agreement, but a shared foundation of knowledge that makes reaching agreement possible. When both parties understand what they were agreeing to, it makes the agreements reached more durable. Across all the cases Fairway has resolved, this shared legal education is consistently one of the steps that separates a productive mediation process from a prolonged legal fight.

In the traditional system, each lawyer presents the law through the lens of their client's position. At Fairway, both spouses hear from the same legal team, at the same time, with no agenda other than clarity. That is a meaningful difference, and it is one of the reasons the INR™ process reaches resolution at the rate that it does.

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Client testimonials

Success comes in many forms. For us, it is hearing back from our clients and reading how we have changed their lives for the better. These stories are the reason we do what we do.

Working with Colette streamlined the separation process and allowed us to work together collaboratively,making decisions for the best possible outcome for our family going forward. Colette’s straightforward approach and positive attitude made an inherently stressful situation as simple as it could have been. I was incredibly impressed with how efficiently Fairway Divorce Solutions was able to create a Resolution Plan, as we used their fast track method to ensure the financial matters could be handled as quickly as possible. With having all the financial details ready for the initial meeting and Colette mediating the family plan details we were able to have a draft of the Resolution Plan within a month of the initial meeting, and with the helpful recommendation for Lawyers who have worked with Fairway Divorce Solutions often, the separation agreement was finalized in less than a month. Colette is the first person I would contact should I have a family dispute in the future and would highly recommend Fairway Divorce Solutions. I truly can’t thank Colette and Sarah enough for all their fantastic work.

- Fairway Client, January 2019

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What comes next

With financial disclosure complete and both spouses educated on the legal framework, the divorce process moves to the Financial Pie™ Consensus stage. Each spouse meets individually with their Divorce Resolution Expert to review every asset and liability on the joint net worth statement and agree on values, before anyone discusses who gets what. You can read more about how that works on the Financial Agreement page.

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