Updated May 11, 2012

The Alberta Registries have informed us of a significant change in procedures that will potentially impact everyone filing for a divorce in the province.

Old: In the past, you were required to strike through any paragraphs which did not apply to your situation; you were not permitted to delete those paragraphs.

Update: it now appears that some registries are telling people to delete paragraphs that do not apply; others are telling people to leave the paragraphs in place but add "N/A" to signal the item is not applicable; and still others are telling people to strike through text that does not apply.

Different judicial districts appear to be establishing different requirements, and there does not (yet) appear to be a common standard among Alberta's courts.

Because of this, our strong recommendation is, before you prepare your divorce papers, identify the court where you will be filing the papers and contact the court to ask: How should I deal with paragraphs that are not relevant to my situation?

Because of the above changes, some customers will have to edit the Word forms in our divorce kits to suit their purposes; printing out a PDF form and typing (or handwriting on it in cases where that is allowed) won't work anymore if irrelevant paragraphs must be completely removed.

This change in some courts to deleting paragraphs appears to be based on an assumption, that all parties seeking a divorce in Alberta have access to a computer and word processing software. We think this is a dubious assumption.

{rokintensedebate}