Executive Summary: Key Legal and Evidentiary Issues

• This case falls primarily within family law, centering on parenting time (access), parental alienation, and reunification therapy in the Ontario Superior Court of Justice.
• It also engages family-law costs and civil procedure, applying Family Law Rules 1, 18 and 24 on offers to settle, divided success, unreasonable behaviour, bad faith, and full-recovery costs.
• The court held that “success was divided” between the parties but that the applicant, Adam Michael Cousins, was overall the more successful party on the main issues.
• The respondent, Sarah Rachel Healey, was found to have engaged in unreasonable behaviour and bad faith, primarily through alienating conduct and repeated failures to comply with court orders.
• After assessing reasonable “full recovery” costs for Mr. Cousins and applying a 33% reduction for his partial responsibility, the court fixed his recoverable costs at $81,000, all-inclusive, payable by Ms. Healey.
• The $81,000 costs award is expressly stated to be in addition to earlier costs and penalties against Ms. Healey, which are not quantified in this endorsement, so the overall total monetary impact of the entire litigation cannot be determined from this document alone.

Facts and family law background

This endorsement arises out of a long-running family law dispute between the applicant father, Adam Michael Cousins, and the respondent mother, Sarah Rachel Healey, in the Ontario Superior Court of Justice. The underlying proceeding concerned Mr. Cousins’ application for what was then called “access” (now “parenting time”) to the parties’ two children, as well as related relief and costs. From the outset, the core issue was whether and how Mr. Cousins would have parenting time with the children and the extent to which each parent’s conduct had contributed to the children’s refusal to spend time with their father. The parties’ separation had led to a gradual erosion of the father–child relationship, with the children ultimately rejecting contact. The court had already ordered various therapeutic interventions and reconciliation efforts, including the involvement of the Office of the Children’s Lawyer (OCL), individual counselling for the children, and later formal reunification therapy with a participating expert, Ms. Paula DeVeto. Interim and consent orders required both parents and the children to participate in that process as a step toward rebuilding the relationship. Despite these measures, the children remained resistant to reconciliation and refused to attend further therapy or parenting time with Mr. Cousins.

Practice areas and legal framework

The primary practice area in this case is family law, particularly parenting disputes involving parenting time, decision-making, parental alienation, and the use of therapeutic interventions. The judgment analyzes concepts such as the children’s wishes and preferences, the exercise of parental authority, and the impact of a parent’s conduct on the viability of the parent–child relationship. A second, closely related practice area is family-law costs and civil procedure under the Ontario Family Law Rules. The endorsement is a costs decision issued after the main parenting judgment. It focuses on Family Law Rule 24 (presumption of costs to the successful party, divided success, unreasonable behaviour, bad faith, and enhanced costs for offers to settle) and Rule 18 (formal requirements and consequences of offers to settle). It also considers Rule 1(8), which provides remedial powers where a party fails to obey court orders, and discusses the role of written offers to settle, their severability, and whether later offers revoke earlier ones. Throughout, the court draws on appellate and Superior Court authority on costs, including cases such as Jackson v. Mayerle, Arthur v. Arthur, Beaver v. Hill, Apotex Inc. v. Eli Lilly Canada Inc., C.S. v. M.S., and M.A.B. v. M.G.C., to articulate the governing principles of reasonableness, proportionality, and the meaning of “full recovery costs.”

Positions of the parties and offers to settle

Mr. Cousins’ application sought an order for regular, unsupervised parenting time every other weekend and one day per week, with reasonable unsupervised parenting time during holidays, and costs. Ms. Healey’s Answer asked that his claim be dismissed with costs; she did not file a separate claim for her own parenting orders. Over the course of the litigation, both parties made various offers to settle, which later became central to the costs analysis. Mr. Cousins relied on a comprehensive, severable, multi-part offer dated November 16, 2024, addressing decision-making, communication, remedies for alleged breaches of court orders, parenting time and its review, therapy, travel with the children, children’s documents, and case management. Only those parts dealing with parenting time, enforcement under Rule 1(8), therapy, and case management were treated as relevant comparators, because the other topics were not actually pleaded or adjudicated at trial. Ms. Healey made three offers, but only the last fully complied with the signature requirement of Rule 18(4). Her first and second offers proposed, in different ways, that Mr. Cousins’ parenting time would proceed subject to the children’s wishes, preferences, or comfort, including a graduated schedule and an express commitment that she would insist the children attend visits. Her third offer, which was non-severable, effectively gave the children complete discretion to decide whether any parenting time with their father would occur, a position that closely tracked her stance during the reconciliation process and would, on the evidence, almost certainly have resulted in no contact at all.

Determining success and identifying the successful party

The court first had to decide who, if anyone, was the “successful party” for purposes of costs. It rejected a purely numerical approach and instead adopted a contextual assessment that focused on the relative importance of the issues and the time and expense devoted to them. On the face of the offers, Mr. Cousins did not succeed in obtaining the key preliminary orders he wanted. He had sought, among other things, that the children be returned to his primary care, that Ms. Healey’s parenting time be suspended for 90 days, that her contact be restricted, that she undertake therapy, that the family remain in reunification therapy under strict terms, and that the trial judge stay seized for ongoing case management. None of those reliefs were granted in the way he proposed. However, the court’s trial judgment had declared Ms. Healey “mainly responsible” for the children having no relationship with Mr. Cousins, mainly due to her deliberate and long-term failure to support that relationship, and had given him an “absolute right” to attend the children’s public activities (such as sports or other events), to approach and speak to the children, and to remain in their presence as part of his efforts to reconnect. That outcome was significantly closer to what Mr. Cousins had been seeking in substance than to Ms. Healey’s position, which was to have the application dismissed and to vest full discretion in the children over whether any contact would occur. The court therefore found that success was “divided,” but not equally. On an overall, global basis, and particularly on the primary issue of whether Ms. Healey’s conduct had improperly blocked a relationship with their father and whether he retained a meaningful avenue for contact, Mr. Cousins was held to be the more successful party.

Unreasonable behaviour, bad faith, and their effect on costs

Even though Mr. Cousins was the more successful party, the court concluded that both parents had engaged in unreasonable behaviour relevant to the costs assessment. For Mr. Cousins, his early failure after separation to diligently enforce his parenting rights and to push for expanded unsupervised parenting time was found to be unreasonable and a contributing factor to the children’s eventual rejection. This early passivity occurred when the children were younger and more amenable to direction, and it undermined his position that Ms. Healey alone was responsible for the breakdown. Over time, however, Mr. Cousins attempted to remedy the situation by commencing the litigation, seeking OCL involvement, pressing for counselling with Ms. McIntyre, and securing the later reconciliation therapy order with Ms. DeVeto. In contrast, the findings against Ms. Healey were far more serious. The court found that she had consistently failed to insist that the children attend parenting time, had abdicated parental responsibility by letting them decide whether visits would happen, had disregarded the recommendations of the OCL investigator and other professionals, had stalled counselling processes, and had repeatedly failed to comply with court orders, some of which were made on consent. The court also referenced its trial findings that there was substantial evidence of alienating actions by Ms. Healey, that these actions had been the primary cause of the children’s complete rejection of their father, and that she was mainly responsible for the lack of relationship. Taken together, this conduct met the definition of bad faith under the Family Law Rules: it showed a pattern of deliberate non-compliance, alienation, and actions contrary to the children’s best interests, carried out despite court orders and professional advice. Because of this, the court held that Ms. Healey’s behaviour warranted costs on a full-recovery basis under Rule 24(10), or alternatively under the doctrine of extremely unreasonable behaviour as articulated in Jackson v. Mayerle, subject only to necessary adjustments for divided success and for reasonableness and proportionality.

Quantification of costs and the monetary outcome

The court then turned to quantifying costs. Mr. Cousins sought “full indemnity” costs of $159,970.62, inclusive of HST and disbursements. Ms. Healey, who reported incurring $148,567.13 in legal costs, initially asked for $74,004.65 in costs on the assumption that she was the successful party, but in reply suggested that each party bear their own costs if the court did not agree. Applying the principles from Beaver v. Hill, Apotex Inc. v. Eli Lilly Canada Inc., and related cases, the court emphasized that the amount awarded must reflect what is reasonable, fair, and proportionate for the unsuccessful party to pay, rather than automatically mirroring the winner’s actual expenses. It scrutinized Mr. Cousins’ bill of costs in detail, disallowing a large block of time (107 hours) where the description “all services rendered” was too vague to permit meaningful review, and making adjustments where claimed work might overlap with earlier motions for which separate costs orders had been made. The court compared trial-preparation and attendance time between Mr. Cousins’ counsel and Ms. Healey’s former counsel and concluded that the hours devoted to the trial itself were broadly consistent and not inflated. It also reviewed the hourly rates of counsel and a senior law clerk, finding the lawyers’ rates appropriate but reducing the clerk’s rate to keep it proportionate. Further adjustments were made for work performed by an associated lawyer on a motion brought on behalf of the children by a third-party clinic, whose costs could not fairly be shifted to Ms. Healey. The court also addressed expert fees for Ms. DeVeto, the reunification therapist, allowing recovery of her costs for trial preparation and attendance and for a court-ordered report, but apportioning those amounts between the parties in line with their divided success. It rejected a claim for reimbursement of “uninsured” therapy costs, pointing to the parties’ agreement and prior judicial directions that required those therapeutic expenses to be shared separately from this costs order.

After making all of these adjustments, the court determined that Mr. Cousins’ reasonable “full recovery costs” (in the sense used in Rule 24 and the case law) amounted to $120,910.21, inclusive of HST and disbursements. Recognizing that Mr. Cousins was not entirely blameless and that success was divided, the court applied a 33% reduction to this figure to reflect his partial responsibility for the children’s estrangement and Ms. Healey’s partial, though lesser, success. This produced a net figure of $81,009.84, which the court rounded down to $81,000. It then ordered that Ms. Healey pay costs to Mr. Cousins in the amount of $81,000, all-inclusive. Importantly for your question, the court expressly stated that this $81,000 is “in addition to” any costs previously awarded against Ms. Healey in the proceeding and in addition to penalties already imposed. Those earlier amounts are not quantified in this endorsement. Accordingly, based on this costs endorsement alone, the clearly identified successful party for costs purposes is the applicant, Adam Michael Cousins, and the quantified monetary award ordered here is $81,000 in costs payable by the respondent, Sarah Rachel Healey. The total combined monetary impact of all costs, penalties, or damages across the entire case cannot be determined from this document alone because the earlier awards are referenced but not stated in dollar terms.