In this presentation, Taruna Agrawal, a lawyer at Rise Women’s Legal Centre, will cover the basics of family law in British Columbia. Taruna will aim to cover subjects like guardianship and explain parenting time and responsibilities and how these may be allocated. She will also review how the legislation defines family violence and various other terms. For instance, “common law” is not a legal term in the Family Law Act and yet, it is used every day. She will parse this and other colloquial vocabulary in this session. The purpose of this workshop is to give the participants the vocabulary to have a dialogue in the family law realm and to help their clients with the same.

Taruna Agrawal is the lawyer who is responsible for the Family Advocate Support Line at Rise, assisting advocates across BC in delivering legal services to their clients. Before Rise, Taruna was a sole practitioner in the areas of family and immigration law. She has also been a supervising lawyer at a non-profit organization in BC for the Women Leaving Abusive Relationships program. She is a subject editor on Clicklaw Wikibooks for the chapter entitled “Immigrants and Family Law.” Taruna is passionate about access to justice and works daily to ensure that people, especially women leaving abusive relationships, have access to affordable counsel.