About
Bio
Kelly Harvey Russ is a lawyer who has restricted his legal practice to Family and Child Protection matters for the past 17 years. Early on Kelly recognized that litigation is not always the best solution to family law issues and as such he took steps to qualify as a Family Law Mediator and Child Protection Mediator in British Columbia. Aside from family law, Kelly has a keen interest in human rights and sat as a Human Rights Commissioner for 9 years with the Canadian Human Rights Commission.
Kelly Russ provides family law services in Metro Vancouver, Vancouver, West Vancouver, North Vancouver, the North Shore, Surrey, Richmond, New Westminster and Haida Gwaii.
Approach
Our firm represents clients in all areas of family law.
When dealing with your family law matter, we focus on ensuring that your rights are advanced and protected in a timely fashion. Family law litigation can be emotionally driven and our role as legal counsel is to provide objective legal advice that is in your long-term best interests. Given the current economy, the cost of litigation is always an issue.
Our approach is to explore all options including litigation to ensure that legal fees and costs are kept to a minimum.
If your matter has to go to court, there can be no firm commitment as to legal fees and time estimates regarding when your matter may be resolved are at best educated guesses. This is because your case is affected by multiple variables that are generally out of your control and our firm’s control including: court schedules for pre-trial applications that need to be heard , scheduling the trial itself, whether your ex-spouse has representation (self-represented litigants often require more court time), the position opposing counsel takes and so forth.
As part of keeping costs within reason, mediation is always preferred. Mediation is preferred not for just cost reasons but because mediation enables all parties to retain greater control over the outcome of a family law matter.
A mediated outcome may produce a result that is not everything that you hoped for. However, the advantage is that it has the potential to avoid a scenario where a judge (who may or may not have family law experience) makes a decision about your property or your children that results in a “winner takes all” scenario.
Representative Matters
Our lawyers can assist in:
- trial work
- preparing prenuptial agreements or separation agreements
- negotiating separation agreements, as well as
- variation of existing court orders and agreements.
A note about self-representation
Without legal training and courtroom experience trial work is exhausting and the process can be more time consuming than if you have a family lawyer in your corner.
Representing yourself in your own family law case is ill-advised. Family law disputes inevitably create strong emotions that can cloud your ability to make good decisions.
Having said that, for those who wish to go it alone, here are two comprehensive sites to start with: