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It is accepted, even by those who work within it, that Ontario’s family law system is utterly broken.

That this is a given, in the same way that poor people accept that they’ll have a 10-year wait for social housing, or governments will waste money, or that the sun will rise in the east, is absolutely shocking.

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A few lawyers, leading among them the law professor and reformer Omar Ha-Redeye, are trying to change it. More simply conduct themselves properly and reasonably, not adapting “the scorched-earth” approach to litigation that has seen costs balloon.

A few judges have decided they simply aren’t going to put up with it anymore, notably the magnificent Ontario Superior Court Judge Alex Pazaratz, whose decisions simply reek of common sense.

(In his most recent judgment of March 13 about a preposterous case, Pazaratz began with this: “The next time anyone at Legal Aid Ontario tells you they’re short of money, don’t believe it. It can’t possibly be true. Not if they’re funding cases like this.”)