Extraordinary Expenses under the Guidelines

One of these areas of the new child support law that is in flux is the meaning and intent of Section 7 of the guidelines which allows the court to add on amounts to the Table Amount, for specific extraordinary or special expenses. The court is limited to the items listed in the statute, and in the case of expenses for extracurricular activities and schooling, the amount of the expense must be shown to be extraordinary.

In Andries v. Andries, the Manitoba Court of Appeal put limitations on the meaning of "extraordinary expenses" under the child support guidelines. It held that the table amounts implicitly include some allocation for those expenses, what the average family would spend ordinarily, although what that threshold amount is not stipulated. The court endorsed an approach that would look at the expense itself, to see if it was out of the ordinary for an activity of that class, in general, or as compared to the average child. The courts of appeal of other provinces have interpreted the test differently, holding that the meaning of extraordinary is tied to the income of the family in question, that is, what is extraordinary for them.

One must be very careful in reading the cases as the Manitoba law on section 7 expenses for example has been radically amended since Andries. Always check the statute. The 2001 amendments require the court to consider the "necessity of the expense in relation to the child's best interests and the reasonableness of the expense in relation to the means of the parents and those of the child and, where the parents cohabited after the birth of the child, to the family's spending pattern prior to separation". "Extraordinary Expenses" must take into account the amount of support being paid and what the recipient can reasonably cover.