The total money you earn before taxes or other deductions are taken out

In Canada, divorce is always based on the ground of ‘marital breakdown’, and there are three ways to show that your marriage has broken down. These include:

• One year’s separation from your spouse:  living “…separate and apart for at least one year immediately preceding the determination of the divorce”
• Adultery: “the spouse against whom the divorce proceeding is brought has…committed adultery” (this means you cannot apply for divorce based on your own adultery – it has to be the other spouse who committed it)
• Cruelty: “…physical or mental cruelty of such kind as to render intolerable the continued cohabitation of the spouses.” This means that the cruelty had to have been of a serious nature, and you could not continue to live with your spouse as a result.

See ‘Litigation guardian’