Who pays the legal costs of a contested guardianship application in Ontario?

Costs in a contested Ontario guardianship application are decided by the court based on the circumstances, rather than following one automatic rule, and can be ordered against a party personally, paid out of the incapable person's own property, or some combination of both, depending on how the litigation was conducted and who acted reasonably. Where the dispute is a genuine, good-faith disagreement about what's actually in the incapable person's best interests, courts have some flexibility to have reasonable costs paid from that person's property rather than penalizing family members simply for raising a legitimate concern.

Where a party acts unreasonably, pursues the application (or the opposition to it) for a personal agenda unrelated to the incapable person's genuine interests, or conducts the litigation in a way that unnecessarily drives up costs, they risk a personal costs order instead, similar to costs consequences in other types of contested estate and capacity litigation. Because costs outcomes depend heavily on how reasonably each side behaves throughout the case, not just who wins, get legal advice early on how to conduct your involvement in a way that protects your costs position.