100+ Free NCA Family Law Practice Questions

Canadian Family Law is one of the subjects assessed by the National Committee on Accreditation (NCA), a committee of the Federation of Law Societies of Canada, for internationally trained lawyers and foreign law graduates. It covers the constitutional framework of family law, marriage and divorce, spousal and child support, parenting after the 2021 Divorce Act amendments, division of family property, and unmarried partners and unjust enrichment. Passing the NCA's assigned exams is a step toward qualifying to practise law in a Canadian common-law province.

The real NCA Family Law exam is open-book and fact-based, with a maximum of three hours. It is administered online with proctoring and uses written short-answer, essay, and problem questions rather than multiple choice. It is graded on a pass/fail basis, where 50% is a pass, and the NCA does not publish a fixed number of questions. The 100 multiple-choice questions in this OpenExamPrep bank are a knowledge-prep aid to reinforce the substantive law; they are not the format of the actual exam.

The fee to register for each NCA exam is $500 CAD plus applicable taxes. This is separate from the one-time NCA assessment (application) fee of $400 CAD plus taxes, which covers the evaluation of your foreign credentials. Additional fees apply for exam appeals or cancellations, each plus taxes.

Effective March 1, 2021, the Divorce Act replaced 'custody' with 'decision-making responsibility' and 'access' with 'parenting time,' and introduced 'contact orders' for non-spouses such as grandparents. The amendments made the best interests of the child the only consideration in parenting decisions, gave primary consideration to the child's safety, added a broad definition of family violence, and created a detailed relocation framework (notice under s. 16.9 and burdens of proof under s. 16.93).

The Divorce Act and matrimonial-property statutes apply to married spouses. In several provinces, such as Ontario, unmarried partners have no automatic statutory property-sharing rights and must claim through the equitable doctrine of unjust enrichment. The leading cases are Pettkus v Becker (unjust enrichment and the remedial constructive trust) and Kerr v Baranow (the three-element test, the joint family venture, and the value-survived monetary remedy). Some provinces, however, extend property statutes to qualifying common-law partners.

Under the Constitution Act, 1867, Parliament has jurisdiction over marriage and divorce (s. 91(26)), so the federal Divorce Act governs divorce and its corollary relief — spousal support, child support, and parenting — for married spouses. The provinces have jurisdiction over property and civil rights (s. 92(13)), so the division of family property, the rights of unmarried partners, adoption, and child protection are governed by provincial legislation. In a typical divorce, the divorce and support are federal while the property division is provincial.