Normalwoman: The issue with the advice you gave is she said his earnings were CASH which cannot be traced. I hope Sharlene can find some evidence of his income on paper or in an account, but some people just live "off the grid" and their is no paper trail.
If you really want to get out of this terrible marriage, consider just giving up on trying to get any money from him.
Do you have equity in the condo?
You have access rights to it.
Consider going there, stripping it bare of anything valuable, and then signing it over to him.
Cash earnings certainly can be traced by showing monthly expenditures. It happens all the time with people earning commissions which they aren't declaring.
Canada has very clear laws with regard to imputation of income.
Like I said, I advised this poster to go to: canlii.org. She will find many, many cases to show how to prove self-employed income and how she might impute based on what he's spending...happens all the time.
The judge won't do anything. Judges work on evidence...its up to her to prove her case. You definitely cannot rely on a judge here.
Normalwoman: Ultimately the Judge reviews/decides/orders especially when there is very limited involvement of Lawyers due to lack of cooperation/lack of finances. I have already been through the process of divorce back in 2009, and, like it or not, children are involved in the divorce because they have to live with the fallout. My parents divorced when I was a teen and our daughter was a teen when her Dad left. I encouraged our daughter to enjoy her life and not get caught up with our stuff. My ex, however, informed her of what was in the divorce agreement, so, there is no guarantee of keeping the kids out of it. I was not told about the details of my parents divorce for 30 years and suffered financially because my Dad stopped both spousal and child support (back then things were different and especially cs support was not enforced). I was asked by my mom for money when I was ages 19 to 21 and provided for her. She still, to this day, refuses to tell me where the money went. A friend of mine went through the same thing because of an absent parent.
Judges make orders based on evidence not hearsay. This poster would have to be able to show that he is misreporting income.
Its very incorrect and bad advice to tell a poster to do nothing and let a judge take care of it. They can't...they don't have any conflicting evidence aside from what he's declared to CRA.
She needs to collect evidence and give it to her lawyer to compile. Once that's done and she has a case conference, she can then file a motion to have the evidence reviewed. Ultimately, when you are disputing reported income and asking for a variation, you need to compute an imputation amount based on what he's actually spending. And people have successfully done this...but it takes proving and you need documentation to do so.
If she leaves it to a judge, she'll get nothing more than what he's reported.
I highly recommend this OP to start finding every piece of financial documentation she can. Also document what he drives, where he lives, etc. And do some canlii research. The cases similar to yours will show you what you need to do to get his true income imputed to him.