Superior Court makes father pay costs of $60,000 for unreasonable behaviour

The Ontario Superior Court of Justice has issued a final order directing a father to pay the mother $60,000 in trial costs, including harmonized sales tax and disbursements, in light of his unreasonable and harmful behaviour. 

The parties married in February 2008 and had two sons born in June 2009 and December 2010. The mother left the family in July 2020. 

In August 2020, she applied for a divorce, child and spousal support, custody of or access to the sons, a restraining order against her husband, equalization of the net family properties, and exclusive possession and/or sale of the matrimonial home. She alleged domestic violence against her spouse. 

Last Feb. 13, in Chyher v. Al Jaboury, 2025 ONSC 998, the Superior Court issued an order directing: 

• the parties to have a week on/week off shared parenting schedule over the two children, beginning in March 
• the mother to have sole final decision-making authority over major decisions affecting the sons, including those about education, extracurricular activities, medical and dental care, and psychological health, subject to consultation with her husband 

The court asked the parties to provide cost submissions. 

The mother accepted that the trial’s outcome aligned more with her spouse’s request. However, she sought $103,000 in full recovery trial costs based on his unreasonable and bad faith behaviours. She alternatively asked for $92,000 in substantial indemnity costs or $61,800 in partial indemnity costs. 

The father requested $113,700 in substantial indemnity costs. He submitted that he succeeded in ensuring that the court ultimately heard the children’s voices and was the more successful party overall at trial. 

He alleged that he extended an April 2022 settlement offer that was more favourable to his wife than the trial outcome. He added that he paid the costs of reunification therapy and supervised parenting time for almost two years. 

Mother wins costs

On July 18, in Chyher v. Al Jaboury, 2025 ONSC 4252, the Ontario Superior Court found it reasonable and just to order the father to pay the mother costs of $60,000. 

The court ruled that the mother was a victim of her husband’s physical abuse, sexual impropriety, and coercive control for most of their relationship. 

The court noted that it considered the father’s behaviour unreasonable and harmful in its prior decision: 

• Paragraph 1: This case involving what should have been a simple separation became one of struggle, hatred, alienation, and lengthy litigation. 
• Paragraph 2: The mother and sons paid a hefty price for the father’s loss of control over his wife. 
• Paragraph 92: The father showed he could not promote the children’s relationship with their mother. 
• Paragraph 93: The father was the problem in this case. 
• Paragraph 95: The father invented a narrative to justify why his wife left the marriage and blamed her for the breakdown of their relationship, especially in the eyes of the sons. 
• Paragraph 102: Though the mother was the children’s primary parent throughout the marriage, the father used the five months when he had exclusive domain over the sons to turn them against her without any valid explanation or justification. 
• Paragraph 103: It was unfathomable that a parent would do what the father did to the children. 
• Paragraph 103: Limiting the father’s access to the sons and ability to influence them negatively made a difference and demonstrated that he was the source of the difficulties. 
• Paragraph 104: The father severely alienated the children from their mother. 
• Paragraph 107: The father – manipulative, controlling, and prone to prioritizing his needs above everything else – wreaked havoc on his children and their mother due to his need to punish his wife for leaving the marriage. 

The court acknowledged that the father had previously extended a settlement offer that was more favourable to his wife than the trial outcome in terms of parenting time. 

However, the court said that the father made the offer when the parenting assessor recommended more limited supervised parenting time. The court saw no signs that the offer’s provisions were severable, such that the mother could have agreed to the parenting provisions without consenting to the financial provisions. 

The court noted that the trial outcome was more favourable to the mother than her spouse’s offer on some parenting issues, including decision-making authority.