Both parents of the child have a history of substance use
The Ontario Superior Court of Justice, in a recent decision, has refused to order supervised parenting time despite the father’s failure to comply with random drug testing required under a minute of settlement.
Mark Shankman and Melanie Dennison began dating in 2017 and their son, Josh, was born a year later. Dennison is a cardiac technologist, and Shankman is a practicing dentist. The couple have a history of substance abuse problems, Dennison with alcohol and Shankman with drugs.
In 2022, Shankman was charged with three counts of assaulting Dennison which led to their separation. Shankman’s history of abuse and drug treatment goes back about ten years. The Royal College of Dentistry of Canada had allegedly disciplined him with respect to insufficient record-keeping and inability to account for medications.
Following the parties’ separation, Shankman brought an urgent motion against Dennison, to require that her shared parenting time with their son be supervised because she was allegedly abusing alcohol. The day before the motion was to be heard, the parties entered into minutes of settlement which dealt with each parties’ concerns about the other’s substance abuse.
Since the time of the minutes, Shankman had taken only two drug tests, one of which, show the presence of cocaine.
The dispute in Shankman v. Dennison, 2023 ONSC 4265 deals with an “urgent” motion that Dennison had brought to the Ontario Superior Court of Justice. She sought an order requiring that Shankman’s parenting time be supervised for failure to comply with the minutes’ requirement that he undertake random drug testing.
Shankman asserted that he has complied with minutes, and he argued instead that it was the mother who failed to comply with the minutes. In the court’s opinion, Shankman has “provided a less than fulsome or compelling explanation of his failure to test more regularly or his failure of his one reported test.”
The court noted that no evidence was presented that there has been an actual problem with the Shankman’s care of the child since the signing of the minutes. Accordingly, the court’s decision on Dennison’s motion was based on the child’s best interests rather than as a form of punishment of the father for a failure to comply with the intent of the parties’ minutes of settlement.
The court concluded by stating that Shankman’s parenting time is not required to be supervised at the present time.
