Getting a Grandparent's Support Arrears Onto a Real Payment Plan

The situation

Luc had been raising his grandchild in Hamilton for three years, ever since his daughter, Rejean, passed away. The child's father, Ramon, a specialist physician, had never fought the arrangement. From the start he agreed, in conversation and by text message, to send Luc a monthly amount toward the child's care. There was no court order and no written agreement — just a number Ramon proposed early on, based loosely on what he was earning at the time, and a standing e-transfer that arrived most months, though not always on the same date and not always for the same amount.

Luc, a commercial landlord who managed a handful of rental properties across the city, had enough income of his own not to press the point for years. The arrangement was awkward but workable. That changed when his grandchild started needing orthodontic treatment and a tutor, and Luc did the math on what three years of a flat, never-updated payment had actually covered against what a physician's income should have supported. He came to Treadstone Law wanting to know two things: what Ramon actually owed under the rules, and whether asking for it now would blow up an otherwise cooperative relationship.

The problem

Child support in Ontario is not a negotiation between two people who happen to agree on a number — it is set by the Child Support Guidelines, which calculate a table amount based on the paying parent's income and the number of children, updated as that income changes. A person who is not a child's parent but who has stepped into a parent's role — a grandparent with day-to-day care and guardianship, for instance — can apply for support from the parent under the Family Law Act, the same as a parent would. Luc had never done that. He had accepted a private figure from Ramon and left it there.

Two problems followed from that. First, Ramon's income had grown substantially since the arrangement began — his specialist practice had expanded and his income had climbed to roughly $410,000 a year — but the payment amount he sent Luc had never moved. Second, and more importantly for anything owed retroactively, there was no order and no clear record of what Ramon's income actually was in each of the three years, only Luc's estimate based on conversations. Without documentation, there is no way to calculate a table amount, and without a table amount, there is nothing precise to collect.

The guideline tables themselves only run up to a set income ceiling; above that point, the table amount is calculated using a formula that combines the amount set at the ceiling with an additional component tied to the income above it, rather than reading a number straight off a chart. At Ramon's income level, that formula mattered — the correct monthly amount was materially higher than anything a rough estimate would produce, and higher than what Ramon had been sending.

What we did

1. Requested formal income disclosure. Under the guidelines, a paying parent has an ongoing obligation to provide income documentation — tax returns, notices of assessment, and pay or practice records — when support is at issue. We sent Ramon a formal request for his income information for each of the three years in question, framed as the first step toward a proper calculation rather than an accusation.
2. Calculated the correct table amount for each year. Once the income figures came back, we ran the guideline calculation year by year, applying the above-ceiling formula to Ramon's income. That produced a defensible, documented monthly figure for each of the three years — figures that were consistently higher than what Ramon had actually paid.
3. Quantified the shortfall. Comparing the correct table amounts against Ramon's actual payments over three years produced a total shortfall of roughly $58,000. We set that number out clearly, year by year, so Ramon's side could check the arithmetic rather than simply be told a total.
4. Reviewed Ramon's claimed direct contributions. Ramon's counsel argued that some of the shortfall should be offset by payments Ramon had made directly — camp fees, a laptop, part of a family trip — that he said should count toward support even though they had not gone through Luc. We reviewed the documentation for each claimed item. Some were reasonable child-related expenses with clear records; others were gifts with no connection to the child's care. We agreed to credit the documented, child-specific items and rejected the rest, which brought the shortfall down to about $41,000.
5. Negotiated a structured resolution rather than litigating. Going to family court to prove the full amount was possible, but it would have meant months of delay, legal costs on both sides, and a real risk of damaging a co-parenting-style relationship that, awkward arrangement aside, had actually worked for the child. We proposed a settlement: a partial lump sum on signing, followed by fixed monthly instalments over eighteen months, alongside a corrected, properly calculated ongoing support amount going forward.
6. Put the going-forward amount on a proper footing. The new agreement fixed the monthly support figure using the current guideline calculation and built in a yearly income exchange, so the same drift could not happen again without either side noticing.
7. Registered the order with the Family Responsibility Office. Once the parties reached a consent order reflecting the settlement, we had it filed with the Family Responsibility Office, the provincial body that collects and enforces support payments and can act — including wage garnishment or licence suspension — if payments stop. Registration meant Luc no longer had to rely on Ramon remembering to send an e-transfer.

The outcome

Ramon agreed to pay roughly $36,000 of the $41,000 net shortfall — a compromise that reflected a handful of grey-area expenses neither side wanted to keep arguing about, plus a small discount in exchange for prompt payment and avoiding court. He paid about $12,000 up front and the remaining $24,000 in fixed monthly instalments over eighteen months, with the schedule built into the consent order so it was enforceable if he fell behind. Going forward, his support payments moved to the correctly calculated table amount for his current income, with a yearly review clause so it could adjust as his income changed rather than staying fixed by default.

Luc did not recover every dollar he believed the guidelines entitled his grandchild to. He and his counsel had assessed the risk of a fully litigated claim honestly: a court could have ordered the full $41,000, but it could also have found some of Ramon's offset arguments more persuasive than Luc did, and either way the process would have taken the better part of a year and consumed money and goodwill neither side had to spare. The negotiated outcome gave Luc a documented, enforceable order, a meaningful recovery of the shortfall, and — as important to him as the money — an arrangement Ramon could live with without becoming adversarial about future contact with his child.

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