Isaac Jason Paonessa

He's not the lawyer you plan to meet. Isaac has a background in investment services and financial planning from my time on Bay Street at the Bank of Montreal.

From those experiences, he learned the power of a team approach on complex property and business matters for high net worth individuals. He carries those lessons with him in family law where a separation involves the division or equalization of significant assets that are mixed in personal, corporate, and trust holdings. He works with your other experts to ensure the best set of options are explored and presented to a client, including collaborating with colleagues.

Bay Street experience enables him to offer an in-depth perspective when personal, farm, or corporate assets are at stake in a legal dispute, especially in a family law or divorce matter.

He completed articles of clerkship at a full-service law firm. This exposed him to a wide variety of legal experience, such as family law litigation, commercial litigation, mediation and arbitration, creditor-debtor litigation linked to insolvency and bankruptcy, and regulatory & white collar defence. This diverse legal experience allows him to understand the importance of a forensic approach to help clients advance and protect their economic and parental interests.

When undergoing lawyer training in the early years, he had the opportunity to help his supervisor on many cases in the criminal law system. He assisted on jury trials and appeared regularly before judges of the criminal courts on guilty pleas and procedural matters.

Because one's past can continue to haunt them later as they try to negotiate a property matter in a separation or try to achieve a fair amount of parenting time with their children, his appreciation for the impact of the criminal justice system on a family law matter helps him to be a better advisor to and advocate of his client. Isaac regularly appear for clients in the Ontario Court of Justice and the Superior Court of Justice. His law practice focuses on divorce and family law matters and brings extensive trial experience to the table. This ranges from high-conflict court proceedings and complex property division to mediated settlements and domestic contract drafting.