If it looks like income and functions as income, it’s probably income, an Ontario court ruled.
In a lawsuit over alleged unpaid child support, the Ontario Superior Court of Justice sided with the wife of a man who claimed he had no income since the couple separated in 2018 and therefore had no obligation to pay child support or spousal support.
According to the court, Mohammad Altawil argued that he worked at his brother’s grocery store as a volunteer and received financial support from his family, but didn’t earn “income” from his work.
“These are simply two coinciding events happening at the same time,” the court said he claimed.
The court rejected that claim and granted his wife’s application for child support.
According to the court’s decision, the wife, and mother to their three children, argued that Altawil secretly earned income despite not being legally entitled to work in Canada.
The couple, who were both from Saudi Arabia, came to Canada as students and have lived in both countries since they married in 2010. Altawil had regular employment in Saudi Arabia, while his wife largely remained a student. “She has almost exclusively enrolled in a variety of college programs for the express purpose of maintaining her child tax benefits,” the court said.
In 2019, when Altawil was in Canada, he was arrested, his passport was seized and he was ordered to remain in the country until the charges were resolved. While he was ultimately acquitted, in the meantime, he lost his job in Saudi Arabia.
Since then, he has lived with one of his brothers and said he was financially supported by family. Another brother owns a grocery store, where social media evidence showed him working.
According to the court, he testified that “he was not an employee of the store, he was a ‘volunteer’ who helped with social media for promotional purposes … [and that] he was never paid for his ‘volunteer’ work at the store, but that his family … would cover his rent, groceries and other living expenses.”
Ultimately, the court rejected his claims, ruling that “While I do accept that he is not legally entitled to work in Canada, I find as a fact that he has been working at the family grocery store since at least January 2021.”
Based on evidence about his spending, the court estimated he earned about $70,000 per year and calculated child support on that basis, ruling that he owed $78,232 in retroactive child support.
“[Altawil’s] attempt to describe work as the separate acts of a) volunteering and b) receiving family loans has failed. Work is work, and work leads to income. His children are entitled to an equitable share of the income his work creates,” the court concluded.
However, the court declined to order spousal support, saying it was not justified under the circumstances.