How Complex Was This Case?
Most divorce cases are complicated enough. But when marital assets include private company shares, the legal proceedings enter a different dimension entirely.
A court cannot simply "split" a private company in half. A Chartered Business Valuator (CBV) — Canada's highest-level business valuation credential — must be engaged to conduct an independent assessment. The valuation conclusion directly determines the baseline figures for property division. This means any gap in either lawyer's preparation can be exploited to unravel the entire case through a valuation dispute.
Mia He not only met that challenge head-on — she won at both the motion stage and on appeal.
Case Overview
Mia He represented the respondent (husband) throughout — from the motion hearing all the way through the Divisional Court appeal. Victory at every stage.
What Did the Wife's Side Claim?
This was not a straightforward divorce. The applicant advanced eight simultaneous lines of attack:
Eight simultaneous fronts is a classic high-pressure litigation strategy — designed to overwhelm the opposing party and force an error somewhere in the chain.
How Did Mia He Turn the Case?
She didn't spread her defence thin. She found the single pivot point of the entire case: credibility.
In complex cases, clients often expect their lawyer to fight every technical point individually. Mia He's judgment went the other way — she identified systemic inconsistencies in the applicant's evidence and made the decision to anchor the entire case on a credibility attack.
This was a high-risk, high-reward strategy. Once the judge accepted the core finding that the opposing party's evidence was not credible, the remaining eight applications would fall like dominoes.
The motion judge accepted that finding. Entirely.
What Did the Court Say?
All of the applicant's claims were dismissed in their entirety. Beyond that, the court found that the applicant had lacked candour in her evidence and issued a significant costs award against her — an unusually severe sanction in family law, signalling that the court was actively penalising the conduct of one party's litigation.
The applicant appealed. Three Divisional Court judges reviewed the full record and ended the matter with these words:
"The motion for leave to appeal the interlocutory decision of Boucher J. dated July 22, 2024 is dismissed. There shall be no order of costs."
— Backhouse J., D.L. Corbett J., O'Brien J. · Ontario Divisional Court · Public Court Record
Appeal dismissed. No costs order. Case closed.
Why Does This Result Matter?
In Canadian family law practice, cases that simultaneously satisfy all of the following conditions are exceptionally rare:
Yang v. Li, 2024 ONSC 4801 is a publicly searchable decision on CanLII and can be independently verified by anyone.
