Why Ontario Undercompensates Children Who Lose a Parent

When a parent is killed by someone else’s negligence, their children can bring a claim under section 61 of the Family Law Act for the loss of care, guidance and companionship. In principle, the law recognizes that a child has lost something real. In practice, the amounts awarded have stayed remarkably low for decades.

Part of the reason is structural. The law doesn’t presume any compensable award at all. A family has to prove what the relationship was worth, which asks a court to put a figure on a parent’s presence at a graduation, at a wedding, on an ordinary Tuesday. Courts have tended to respond to that impossible task by anchoring to what was awarded in earlier cases, and those earlier cases were themselves anchored to figures set decades ago. The result is a range that has drifted upward slowly while the loss it’s meant to address has not changed at all.

There’s a second problem. Because the amounts are predictable and modest, insurers can treat a fatality claim as a known quantity. A family grieving a parent is negotiating against an institution that has calculated, fairly accurately, what the claim will settle for.

What would actually change it

Two things, neither of them quick.

The first is legislative. Some provinces have set statutory minimums for bereavement damages, which removes the question from the discretion of the court entirely. Ontario has not. That’s a policy choice the legislature could revisit.

The second is what happens in courtrooms. When a jury hears the full evidence of what a family has lost and returns a figure higher than the conventional range, and an appeal court declines to interfere, the range moves. That’s slow, it depends on cases actually going to trial rather than settling, and it depends on appeal courts treating a jury’s assessment as something owed deference rather than a number to be corrected.

Vokes Estate v. Palmer is an example of the second kind. Oatley Vigmond acted for the family of a young mother killed by a speeding driver. The jury’s award was challenged on appeal as excessive, and in 2012 the Ontario Court of Appeal declined to interfere, confirming that a jury’s assessment of what a family has lost is entitled to deference and won’t be reduced simply for exceeding past awards. It has been cited on that point since. You can read the full case result here.

One decision doesn’t reset a range. But it is how the range moves, and it’s the reason these cases are worth taking to trial rather than settling into the conventional figure.

If your family is considering a wrongful death claim, we can talk through what’s involved.