Introduction
In Kohli v Thom, 2025 ONCA 200 [Kohli], the Court of Appeal for Ontario (the “Court”) tackled two recurring flashpoints in modern family litigation: (1) whether a parent who has survived intimate-partner violence may relocate with a young child over the objection of the other parent; and (2) how a court should treat the survivor’s earning capacity when assessing child and spousal support. Upholding the trial judge’s refusal to allow the mother to move from Toronto to Saint John but overturning the decision to impute full-time minimum-wage income to her, the Court clarified that findings of historic family violence do not automatically dictate outcomes on mobility, yet they must be meaningfully integrated into any support calculus. The judgment thus reinforces a deferential, fact-specific model for parenting orders while simultaneously warning against mechanical assumptions about an abused parent’s ability to achieve self-sufficiency.
Background Information
Facts
Sheri Thom and Vikas “Vick” Kohli began cohabiting in 2001, married in 2003, and ultimately settled in Toronto with their son, born in April 2018. Thom, who suffers chronic back pain, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and anxiety, exited the labour market in 2011. At that time, Kohli became the primary earner through his consulting company. In September 2019, the relationship ended acrimoniously. Kohli left the matrimonial home with the 16-month-old after learning Thom intended to move to her family in New Brunswick. Criminal charges against Kohli were withdrawn, but the parties embarked on years of high-conflict litigation coloured by mutual allegations of abuse.
Procedural History
Interim orders gradually granted Kohli expanded parenting time and directed him to pay interim child and spousal support based on a reported 2018 income of about $93,000. A report from the Office of the Children’s Lawyer in August 2020 recommended that Thom receive sole custody and be permitted to relocate, but subsequent motion judges found supervised contact unnecessary and, in 2021, increased Kohli’s parenting to a partial overnight schedule.
At trial (September 2022), both parties were self-represented. Thom sought sole decision-making, relocation, and damages for family violence; Kohli sought joint decision-making and equal parenting time on a rotating weekly schedule. Justice Pinto of the Ontario Superior Court of Justice:
- Denied relocation but granted Kohli equal parenting time and sole decision-making for health and education;
- Found historical family violence perpetrated by Kohli but concluded the risk to the child was attenuated post-separation;
- Imputed income of $76,370 to Kohli (drawing an adverse inference from his opaque corporate records) and $31,000 to Thom (minimum wage), retroactive to 1 January 2022;
- Eliminated spousal support from that date and credited Kohli with past over-payments; and
- Reserved on Thom’s tort claim for family violence pending this Court’s decision in Ahluwalia v Ahluwalia, 2023 ONCA 476.
Issues on Appeal
The Court was presented with three issues on appeal:
- Did the trial judge err in dismissing the request for relocation despite the finding of family violence against the appellant?
- Did the judge err in their related rulings on mobility, parental decision-making and support payments?
- Should fresh evidence of Thom’s post-trial financial hardship be admitted?
Judgment (Coroza & Sossin JJ.A., Simmons J.A. concurring)
The Court first dismissed Thom’s motion to introduce fresh evidence, finding that it failed to meet the criteria set forth in Palmer v The Queen, 1979 CanLII 8 (SCC) [Palmer]. Turning to parenting, the panel affirmed Justice Pinto’s refusal of the relocation request, holding that his blended best-interests analysis disclosed neither legal error nor a palpable and overriding misapprehension of the facts.
On support, however, the Court found a reversible error: the trial judge had improperly imputed a full-time minimum-wage income to Thom—a proven survivor of intimate-partner violence—without addressing how the abuse might have limited her earning capacity. While the $76,370 figure imputed to Kohli was upheld, no income was imputed to Thom; recalculating under the Child Support Guidelines, O Reg 391/97 [Guidelines], the Court ordered Kohli to pay indefinite support of $1,453 per month for spousal support and $712 per month for child support.
Relocation, Best Interests, and the “Blended Approach”
Affirming the value of the “blended approach” established in Chapman v Somerville, 2022 SKCA 88, the Court stressed that a relocation request is folded into the overarching best-interests analysis mandated by ss 16 and 16.92 of the Divorce Act, RSC, 1985, c 3 (2nd Supp)—rather than treated as a stand-alone test. Guided by the Supreme Court of Canada’s decision in Barendregt v Grebliunas, 2022 SCC 22 [Barendregt] and the Court’s own ruling in Shipton v Shipton, 2024 ONCA 624, the panel underscored the limited scope of appellate intervention—reserved for legal error or a palpable and overriding misapprehension of the evidence—and concluded that Justice Pinto’s reasoning met that standard. He explicitly recognized the history of family violence under s 16(3)(j) but, noting the lack of any post-separation incidents and the child’s young age, found the risk of future harm minimal. He next weighed the child’s developmental needs and relationships, observing that life in Toronto provided continuity, socialization, and the steady presence of the paternal grandmother, whereas Thom’s proposal for Saint John remained largely aspirational. Finally, he contrasted the parties’ willingness to sustain the father-child bond: Kohli advanced an equal-time schedule, while Thom’s relocation would drastically reduce contact. Taken together, these findings supported the denial of the move. Finally, the Court found no stereotyping or minimization: Justice Pinto expressly considered indirect exposure risks and cited empirical literature. Thus, Kohli affirms that family-violence findings are critical but not automatically decisive in mobility; their weight turns on chronology, severity, and demonstrated future risk.
Imputing Income to Survivors of Family Violence
The sharpest doctrinal development appears in the Court’s reversal of the support ruling. Faulting the trial judge for “los[ing] sight of his earlier findings of family violence” when applying s 19(1)(a) of the Guidelines, the Court restated three core principles from prior case law (Kohli, para 122). First, the burden lies squarely on the payor to establish that the recipient is intentionally underemployed or unemployed. Second, a survivor’s emotional, psychological, and physical sequelae of abuse may lawfully—and often demonstrably—curtail their capacity to earn income. Third, a court must resist the “trial-performance fallacy”: the mistaken assumption that a litigant who capably participates in courtroom proceedings is therefore capable of maintaining regular employment.
Here, Thom had been out of the workforce since 2011. Her diagnoses of post traumatic stress disorder and obsessive compulsive disorder were unchallenged, and she received no government benefits. Imputing a full-time wage based on an expectation that Thom could physically return to work ignored the family violence and trauma nexus while also effectively punishing her for not undertaking job-search efforts during protracted litigation. The Court substituted an imputed income of $0, demonstrating that family-violence findings have tangible economic consequences.
Socio-Political Implications
From my view, the decision has three key socio-political implications. First, the decision explicitly recognizes economic abuse: it accepts that coercive control and historic violence can leave a survivor with lasting financial incapacity, a view that dovetails with recent legislative reforms and scholarship that treat economic abuse as a distinct form of family violence.1 Second, the ruling has a gendered dimension. Because women are statistically more likely to be both survivors and primary caregivers2, the Court’s rejection of an automatic minimum-wage imputation helps curb systemic gender bias that otherwise depresses support awards to women who cannot readily re-enter the labour force. Third, the judgment tightens disclosure expectations for self-employed payors: by affirming a robust income imputation against Kohli in light of his opaque corporate records, the Court makes clear that entrepreneurial parents bear the burden of transparency—or risk adverse financial inferences.
Conclusion
Kohli ultimately provides a balanced message about when appellate deference should yield to corrective intervention in family cases coloured by trauma. It makes plain that trial-level findings of historical abuse must be woven thoughtfully into every facet of the analysis—serious enough to inform, but not automatically to determine, outcomes on relocation or support. It also sends a dual warning: self-employed payors who keep murky books should expect courts to impute a robust income, whereas survivors of coercive control deserve a cautious, evidence-based assessment of their realistic earning capacity. Finally, the judgment reaffirms that mobility determinations are quintessentially fact-specific; higher courts will disturb a trial judge’s blended best-interests analysis only where a clear legal error or material misapprehension of the evidence is shown. Practitioners should treat Kohli as a roadmap: marshal concrete evidence on programming, trauma, and economic realities; anticipate rigorous scrutiny of income disclosure; and recognise that the child’s welfare, not parental advantage, anchors every analysis.