(LSRI)Prepare the court documents

Prepare the court documents

You'll need:

  • the applicant's completed documents for an interim order):
    • their Notice of Application (Form F31), and
    • their Affidavit (Form F30)
  • your Application Response (Form F32), and 
  • your Affidavit (Form F30), if you choose to prepare one

The person applying for the interim order is called the applicant. (The Notice of Family Claim (Form F3) calls them the "claimant".) You are the respondent.

The applicant must serve you with these documents at least eight full business days before the date set for the hearing. (This means that eight full business days must pass in between the day the applicant serves the documents and the day of the hearing.)

The date and time for the hearing will be written on the Notice of Application (Form F31). Put this on your calendar. You won't get any further notice of the hearing date.

You have five business days from the time you receive these documents to file your Application Response (Form F32) and Affidavits (Form F30) at the court registry and serve a filed copy on the other person. If you don't file and serve these documents, the applicant can continue with the application and will appear at the court hearing without you. Orders can be made in your absence.

If you don't oppose the application and don't want to go to court, let the applicant know that so they can tell the judge/master that the application is unopposed. Generally, the judge/master will then make the order the applicant is requesting.

OR

You can choose to follow other procedures if you don't want to oppose the application or are willing to agree to the applicant's requests. For more information about these procedures, see Get an interim family order in Supreme Court if you both agree.

Fill out the forms

The forms contain technical instructions to help you fill them out. For more help using the forms, see Common questions about the Supreme Court PDF forms.

Your affidavit in response to the application contains some of the evidence the judge/master uses in deciding whether to make the orders you want. If you want to tell the court about certain facts or circumstances that are relevant to your case, you must set them out in your affidavit or you won't be able to talk about them in court. Neither you nor the judge/master will be able to rely on information that isn't included in your affidavit.

The affidavit you prepare must contain:

  • a description of who you are,
  • the reasons you're opposing the plaintiff's application,
  • any documents that back up what you say in the affidavit, and
  • the facts that support the orders you want.

The affidavit is the written equivalent of giving evidence in court and must contain the truth. Add as many paragraphs to your affidavit as necessary to tell the court everything relevant to your response.

The judge/master will review the information you and the other person provide about your family situation and decide on custody, guardianship, and access issues according to the child's best interests. The amount of child support will be determined according to the child support guidelines. (See child support.)

For help writing the Affidavit, see our pages:

There will be attachments, called exhibits, that go with your affidavit. The information you provide in these attachments must be accurate. You'll have to swear or affirm that the information is true.

Updated on 7 December 2022