Like many honourable lawyers, I believe in honesty, ethics and the principles of civility. I believe lawyers exist to serve and protect families. We are guardians of rights. We ensure that a person’s legal rights are recognized, respected and enforced. We act as interpreters of an intricate legal system, explaining obligations, risks and options. Lawyers exist to level the playing field, ensuring that individuals are not silenced, shamed or overpowered by process or procedure. We are problem-solvers.
Specifically, in the practice of family law, we lawyers are entrusted with delicately resolving very personal and private issues in a family’s life, particularly involving their children. In this area of law, we sit at the intersection of law, psychology and future family planning. Our greatest value in family law is helping people move from conflict to resolution, without unnecessary damage.
In my office, I have a sign hanging that says VE’AHAVTA, which is a direct quote from the Torah (Leviticus 19:18) for “Treat your fellow person the way you would want to be treated.”
I believe that we must demonstrate to all those we interact with respect, honour and diplomacy.
Yet, in my time at the bar, these beliefs have been tested. I have seen a troubling pattern. Apart from lawyers who act honestly, ethically and civilly (the vast majority) are lawyers who are aggressive, rude and belligerent. This (small) group of lawyers deliberately fuel family conflict, use litigation as a weapon, knowingly distort evidence and misrepresent facts to judges and play procedural games – all in the name of “winning”.
In truth, these lawyers are mainly servicing their own egos. For them, a win is a win – however achieved. They see no ethical dilemma. They justify their actions as zealous advocacy, as though the duty to their client eclipses all their other obligations – to the court, to the justice system, and to the families whose lives are being affected.
I have seen these lawyers act without any moral compass, inflame family conflict rather than resolve it, escalate interpersonal disputes rather than narrow them, and pursue litigation strategies that cause children and families enormous damage. I have watched the emotional, psychological and financial toll this takes, particularly on children. These lawyers often leave a wake of damage to the family for years after the end of the retainer.
What makes this more difficult to reconcile is not merely that such behaviour exists, but that it is perpetrated by individuals who are highly educated – licensed professionals who are mandated to help families.
Rule 3.2-4 of the Rules of Professional Conduct states: “A lawyer shall advise and encourage the client to compromise or settle a dispute whenever it is possible to do so on a reasonable basis and shall discourage the client from commencing or continuing useless legal proceedings.”
However, for this group of lawyers, that would mean a reduced income and a shriveled ego – outcomes that such lawyers cannot accept. Coupled with the unwitting client who is emotionally charged, naive, impressionable and willing to pay to battle their ex-spouse, such lawyers are incentivized to fuel the family conflict, ratchet up the temperature and avoid settlement at all costs.
Can it get worse than that?
Yes. Too many times I have seen judges ignore or even reward bad lawyer behaviour – permitting vitriolic submissions, accepting unproven narratives, indulging tactical gamesmanship, or turning a blind eye to conduct that plainly undermines fairness. At the same time, I have seen good lawyers’ behaviour – opposite such lawyers – taken for granted, their compliance with the rules unrecognized or received thanklessly, verbal restraint interpreted as apathy, and their wholesome efforts to maintain integrity ignored.
When this occurs, it packs a double punch – firstly, there is the unethical behaviour, and secondly, there is the unethical behaviour rewarded by a judge.
Last year, I personally experienced this double punch. What should have been a straightforward case turned into a prolonged and punishing ordeal. My client, a father, asked for a little more time with his 11-year-old daughter. He was not seeking to upend the child’s life, displace the mother, or engage in combative litigation. He simply wanted a closer relationship with his child. That should never be controversial in family law.
From the outset, however, the mother’s lawyer appeared determined to transform the case into a bloody battle. He drafted pleadings, briefs and affidavits replete with harsh, vitriolic and invective content. This lawyer made it his personal mission to portray the father as a monster – without any credible evidence. He advanced allegations that the father was mentally ill, addicted to drugs, emotionally unstable, dysregulated, and incapable of caring for his own child. These claims were not only plainly false – they were mean-spirited, hurtful and devastating [parenthetically, we obtained expert reports disproving each allegation.] This lawyer simply manufactured conflict where none was needed.
This lawyer treated email communications as a missile delivery system – each one meant to cause damage. Over the span of a single month, I received over one hundred emails from this lawyer, each one between 1-3 pages long. The volume and length of these emails were not driven by necessity or urgency but by strategy – a strategy to drive up my client’s fees.
As a result of this lawyer, the father was forced to expend thousands of dollars on evidence to disprove these horrific accusations – legal fees, supervised access, assessments, evaluations, counselling, coaching, and related professional interventions – all in an effort to shut down the onslaught of unproven and vituperative allegations. Nonetheless, despite the hard evidence to the contrary (expert reports), this lawyer remained undeterred and maintained his malicious accusations.
The damage did not stop there.
This lawyer used his own past interpersonal conflicts in a manner that forced off the case the assigned Clinical Investigator from the Office of the Children’s Lawyer, asserting that he had conflict with her in the past. That maneuver alone caused an additional six-month delay in the proceedings – six months in the life of this child, six months of lost time between a father and his daughter, and six more months of uncertainty.
When the new Clinical Investigator was finally appointed, the outcome was unequivocal: every one of the mother’s allegations against the father was proven to be false. And yet, even then, the battle did not end.
Despite the findings, this lawyer continued to debate whether this father should be permitted to have a meaningful relationship with his daughter. The question was no longer about evidence or child-focused outcomes; it had become this lawyer’s bloodsport. He was relentlessly ideological, oppositional and entrenched.
The cumulative effect was predictable: a huge sum in lawyer fees borne by both parents, an escalation of acrimony and distrust between the parents, and undue stress placed upon this little girl.
This lawyer is unapologetic. He actually thinks he is a good lawyer, that he is serving a valuable purpose, that he is improving the future of this family. But he is self-absorbed. He is blinded by his ego. He is a danger to this family and to the many spouses who unwittingly retain him. I worry for the families that are damaged by his style of lawyering.
Family law is not supposed to function this way. Family lawyers are not supposed to practice this way. The legal system should never be weaponized this way. The role of the lawyer is not to exhaust, intimidate, or financially cripple a parent who simply wants to love and raise their child.
Family lawyers carry an ethical responsibility that goes beyond ‘winning’. We work with families at their most vulnerable moments, with children who feel the family tension. Integrity, honesty, and restraint are not optional virtues in this field; they are essential duties.
There are lawyers who practice as bulldogs – aggressive, hostile and dogmatic – driven less by the best interests of children than by their own ego. They relish in the conflict.
On a societal scale, when this happens, the damage extends far beyond the individual family. Every family this lawyer is involved with is another unwitting victim. His ego is so big that the only way to stop him is disciplinary action by the Law Society of Ontario. Judges resist stepping into the fray. For there to be disciplinary action by the Law Society of Ontario, someone has to file a complaint. His client won’t. The injured client has no standing. And so the message to lawyers such as this one is that unethical behaviour works – that it should be continued, refined, and repeated. It teaches them that the risks of misconduct are low and the potential rewards high. At the same time, it sends an equally powerful message to responsible and ethical lawyers, and to the parties they represent, that integrity comes at a cost. That being honest may mean losing ground. That acting ethically may have negative consequences.
If the family law system is to function as anything more than a battleground, it must take ethical conduct seriously and stomp it out. Judges must remember that courtroom advocacy is learned from conditioning in the courtroom, that respectful advocacy (in oral and written form) must be celebrated in the courtroom, and conversely, aggressive lawyering must be punished in the courtroom. Judges must recognize the power of the signals they send (ie. silence rewards sharp practice).
Family court judges must confront an uncomfortable truth: when bad behaviour is ignored or rewarded and good behaviour disregarded, the family law system as a whole becomes complicit in the harm to families and the children it claims to protect.
This recent case stands as a stark reminder of how profoundly a lawyer’s conduct can shape – and damage – a family’s future. It also raises an uncomfortable but necessary question: when advocacy crosses the line into deliberate harm, who is protecting the families the system is meant to serve?
This is the heart of the moral dilemma I face.
Do I continue to practise in the way I believe is right, knowing that it may disadvantage my clients in a system that does not consistently value ethical conduct? Or do I compromise, subtly or overtly, in order to “level the playing field,” becoming part of the very problem that troubles me?
For now, I choose to hold the line. I choose to believe that the long-term health of the justice system – and the well-being of the families and children caught within it – depends on lawyers who refuse to abandon these moral principles. But that choice is not without frustration, and it is not without cost.
In the end, my former client will persevere (Why former? He ran out of money and is now a SRL). The truth will prevail. But the cost – financial, emotional, and relational – will be felt far longer and with deep scars than it ever should have been thanks to this lawyer.
That is a cost no parent or child should have to pay.
PS. In case you didn’t know, Ve’ahavta is both a moral principle in Judaism and also a local Toronto humanitarian organization dedicated to promoting positive change in the lives of people of all faiths and backgrounds who have been marginalized by poverty and hardship. Ve’ahavta mobilizes volunteers in meaningful, hands-on experiences to fulfill our collective responsibility to care for our neighbour. I have volunteered a few times to feed the homeless with Ve’ahavta. It is a wonderful charity.
Steve Benmor, B.Sc., LL.B., LL.M. (Family Law), C.S., Cert.F.Med., C.Arb., FDRP PC, Acc.D.C., is a full-time Divorce Mediator/Arbitrator and principal lawyer of Benmor Family Law Group, a boutique matrimonial law firm in downtown Toronto. He is a Certified Specialist in Family Law, a Certified Specialist in Parenting Coordination and was admitted as a Fellow to the prestigious International Academy of Family Lawyers. Steve is regularly retained as a Divorce Mediator/Arbitrator and Parenting Coordinator. Steve uses his 30 years of in-depth knowledge of family law, court-room experience and expert problem-solving skills in Divorce Mediation/Arbitration to help spouses reach fair, fast and cooperative divorce settlements without the financial losses, emotional costs and lengthy delays from divorce court.
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