Children and Family Law

Description: Family law matters involving children can be especially challenging. Our experienced panel will discuss the challenges and issues particular to this area of law. Three unique perspectives will be shared – from a judge, a family law lawyer, and a counsellor.

Presenters:

Justice Karen Wenckebach was recently appointed to the Supreme Court of Yukon.

Before that she had a varied legal career: she worked for many years with Legal Aid in the areas of family, criminal and poverty law.

She then worked at Government of Yukon. For a brief period she was part of the solicitors’ group before the siren call lured her back to litigation. While in the litigation group Justice Wenckebach practiced primarily in the areas of labour, human rights and administrative law.

Justice Wenckebach was also on the Executive of the Law Society of Yukon for several years, and then became a member of the discipline committee for the Law Society.

Shayne Fairman is a partner at Austring Fairman & Fekete. He practices in the areas of Family law, Administrative law and Mental Health law.

 He obtained his law degree from Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario in 1988, and was qualified to practice law in the Yukon and British Columbia in 1989.

Shayne has been a Yukon resident for most of his life.  Shayne appreciates the diverse opportunities living in the Yukon affords, particularly a family-oriented lifestyle.  Shayne can be found golfing on warm summer days, fishing salmon in Alaska on rainy fall days, and keeps warm in the winter by playing broomball.

Dr. Zoë Armstrong, DAT, DKATI, BCATR, RCAT is a registered Art Therapist, who received her Doctorate of Art Therapy at Mount Mary University in November 2020. In 2016, she co-founded Ignite Counselling, a private practice in Whitehorse, Yukon. Her areas of focus are on trauma, grief and loss, as well as crisis intervention.  As part of her practice, she has worked with children involved in child protection matters, and children coping with the separation and divorce of their parents, including those involved in family law litigation. She is an exhibiting artist and neurodiverse, diagnosed as gifted with profound dyslexia and ADHD.

This CPD has been approved for 1.5 hours by the Law Society of British Columbia and may be applied towards the mandatory 12 hour Continuing Professional Development requirement in both BC and Yukon.