5/2/2022 Update:
CNF launched April 12, 2021. One year later, with the consolidation of SCJ Notices effective April 19, 2022 and return to localized in-person hearings (OCJ April 4 / SCJ April 19), comes a reduced need to track the differences between Notices.
We have repurposed existing information to easily find court information in one place, and plan to update this database until the project winds down. We welcome your input on what you’d like to see listed here.
What is this website?
Court Notice Finder is a volunteer project created by a number of Ontario family law legal professionals. We are organizing the voluminous – and often changing – information found in the various Court Notices issued on behalf of Family Law courthouses across Ontario since the beginning of Covid-19 pandemic.
Until now, those navigating the court system need to sift through the various court notices to find the relevant information and confirm that it is up to date. Many legal professionals have already created their own cheat-sheets, but cannot keep up with the changes and variations between courthouses. The result is a lot of lost time and rejected filings, which have frustrated both the Bench, court staff and those using the legal system.
What isn’t this website? (Other resources)
This website is not created by nor affiliated with the Ontario Ministry of the Attorney General (MAG).
It is also not meant to be a complete guide to the Ontario Family Law courts. If you are looking for help making your way through Ontario family law and the court system generally, you are best to start with the Steps to Justice website. Additional resources are available at Luke’s Place, which provides a family law Virtual Legal Clinic to support for women in Ontario who are in abusive situations, including free summary legal advice from family law lawyers trained on gender-based violence.
The Superior Court of Justice released a helpful At-A-Glance Guide to Virtual Hearings (May 12, 2021). The Ontario Court of Justice released a helpful A Guide for Self-represented Family Litigants – What You Need to Know re: Appearances (September 1, 2022).
Currently, we are only organizing notices from the Superior Court of Justice, Superior Court of Justice (Family) and Ontario Court of Justice levels of court. We are not compiling information for the Court of Appeal or Divisional Court (yet).
Where is the information coming from?
Information in the database comes from four sources:
- Publicly available Notices to the Profession issued on behalf of each courthouse (or region of courthouses) on the respective SCJ or OCJ websites
- Notices issued by a particular courthouse (e.g. OCJ Toronto, OCJ Milton courthouses), which are typically posted on a local law association website.
- Personal experience shared between us.
- Information provided by you, via our contact form.
“There are courthouses missing”
This is a volunteer project. We started from the Toronto region and are working our way through the Notices. If you want to help us, please use our contact form.
“There is information missing or incorrect”
We are gathering information primarily from the Court Notices themselves. To the extent you may find gaps in specific information, that is an inherent with the Notices themselves, as they are region specific and implicitly assume the reader has some experience with the court system. If there is incorrect information, we certainly want to know. We ask that you use the contact form to tell us, and we’ll want to add or correct information to our database as soon as it is verified.
Who is involved in compiling the information?
This project is a true group effort.
| Christina Boodhan, Sr. Law Clerk | Creator and editor | Wharton Woods Family Law |
| Shmuel Stern, Lawyer | Creator and website | Disclosure Clinic |
| Ramsha Cheema, Law Clerk | Court Notice Compiler | Stanchieri Family Law |
| Ashley Kennedy, Sr. Law Clerk | Court Notice Compiler | Stanchieri Family Law |
| Carla-Sutton McIntosh, Sr. Law Clerk | Court Notice Compiler | CLS Law Clerk & Transition Coaching |
| Robert Milley, Law Clerk | Court Notice Compiler | Stanchieri Family Law |
| Ananta Roopnarine, Sr. Law Clerk | Court Notice Compiler | Jamal Family Law |
| Special thanks to: | ||
| Julia Passeri | Contributor | Nussbaum Law |
“I want to get involved”
Great. Please use the contact form.
How long will you keep at this project?
As stated above, this is a volunteer project. So it will continue as long as there is interest, or until MAG creates something like this in lieu of the current Notices – to make the project obsolete.
“I have comment about the site, how do I reach you?”
Please use the contact form.