By Neta, founder of SortMyDivorce · Updated
A disclosure statement in Alberta usually points to one of two things: the income documents a Notice to Disclose asks for, or the sworn statement of property that Alberta's Family Property Act requires once an application is filed. Either way, the administrative problem is the same — what left your hands, on what date, and what is still open when the period runs. This guide is for Alberta. The form, the court and the periods named here are Alberta's. A disclosure request in another province uses a different form and different rules, even where the wording looks similar.
| What it is | An Alberta Notice to Disclose (Form FL-17, Schedule A to the Alberta Rules of Court) is a court form used in family matters to request a party's income information. |
|---|---|
| Deadline to comply | The form requires the listed documents "within 1 month of service". Verified from the form. |
| Who else has to send documents | Where the serving party's own income particulars are necessary to determine child support, that party must send equivalent information along with the Notice. |
| What's on the list | A copy of every notice of assessment and reassessment for the 3 most recent taxation years, or a CRA printout of the last 3 years' income tax returns, among the other listed items. |
| How often updated income can be requested | Under the Federal Child Support Guidelines, a written request for updated income documents can be made no more than once a year after a child support order is made. |
| What a court can do if disclosure doesn't come | Draw an adverse inference, impute income, award costs up to full compensation, or on application find a spouse in contempt and order the documents provided. |
| Which court | The Court of King's Bench of Alberta has sole jurisdiction over divorce and the division of property in Alberta. |
Keeping track of dates like these across a stack of letters is exactly what SortMyDivorce does — start a free trial, no card needed.
Log the date it reached you, not the date printed on the form. A Notice to Disclose is drafted, dated and served on different days, and only the day it was served on you starts the one-month period for providing the listed documents. The date at the top of the form tells you when it was prepared. It does not tell you when your month begins.
Write the date down the day it arrives, before anything else. If you set it aside and come back to it a week later, the period has already been running for a week — reading it late does not move the start date. A single line in a log — date received, what it is, one month from that date — settles the question every time someone asks "when is this due."
A Notice to Disclose is a numbered list of documents, not a paragraph to interpret. Go down it item by item and turn each line into its own checklist entry rather than treating the form as one task called "disclosure." The notices of assessment and reassessment for the three most recent taxation years, for example, are one line on the form but three separate documents (or a single CRA printout that covers all three years) — track them as the number of items you actually have to locate, not as one box to tick.
Same approach for a lawyer's written request that is not a Notice to Disclose. Break it into the same kind of numbered checklist even if the letter itself is written as prose. A checklist tells you, at a glance, which lines are done and which are still open. A letter you have to re-read tells you nothing until you re-read it.
Every time a bundle leaves the house, record it the same way, in the same place:
1. Date sent. 2. What was sent — matched to the checklist item, not a vague description like "tax stuff." 3. Format — paper, PDF, a portal upload. 4. Method — mail, courier, email, hand delivery, through a lawyer. 5. Who it went to — the other side directly, or their lawyer.
This is the entry that answers "I sent that in March" with a line instead of a memory. Six months from now, when the other side or their lawyer asks whether a document went out, the log gives you a date and a method rather than a guess. If you also had to send your own income particulars alongside the Notice, log that package the same way, as its own entry — it is disclosure you sent, and it belongs in the same record as everything else.
Disclosure rarely goes out complete on the first try. Send what you have by the date it is due, and keep a separate, dated note of everything still missing.
For each outstanding item, record what it is, why it is not in the package — waiting on an employer, waiting on an institution, held by a third party — and the date you noted the gap. This is not a document you send; it is your own record of what is still owed and why. When the missing item does arrive, add a new sent-log entry for it and close the gap-list line rather than editing the old one, so the sequence of what happened stays visible.
A second request is not automatically the same thing as the first one. Three situations look alike on the page and are not:
1. A repeat of the same request — the other side asking again for items already listed on the original Notice. Log it as its own dated entry, but point it back at the original checklist rather than starting a new one. 2. A written request for updated income documents. The Federal Child Support Guidelines allow this once a child support order is in place, and limit it to no more than once a year. Log the date the request arrived and check it against the date of the last one you logged — that comparison is the whole point of keeping the log. 3. A request for something new — items that were not on the original list at all. Give this its own checklist, separate from the first, so the two lists don't blur into one.
Whichever it is, note the date it arrived and exactly what is being asked for before doing anything else. The log is what lets you tell, months later, which of the three it actually was.
Disclosure runs both directions, and incoming documents deserve the same log as outgoing ones: date received, what came, in what format, and from whom. Match each item against the other side's own list of what they were asked to provide, so you can see which of their listed items are still outstanding the same way you track your own.
A partial reply from the other side goes in the log as a partial reply, with the outstanding items noted the same way you'd note your own gaps. There is no need to characterize why something is missing — the date and the item are the record; what you write down is what came and what didn't.
The sent log and the received log, read together in date order, are the file. Before a court date, the trail should read as a sequence — request, response, follow-up request, response — without anyone having to reconstruct it from memory or from a folder of undated attachments.
Keep copies of what you sent and what you received alongside the log entries, referenced by date, so each line in the log points to an actual document rather than a description of one. A log with no documents behind it is a claim. A log with the documents attached is a record.
Treat documents you receive through this process as belonging to the file they were provided for. Store them separately from anything unrelated, label them by case, and keep them with the rest of the disclosure record rather than folding them into other paperwork or forwarding them elsewhere. Recording what you received and where you kept it is part of the same log as recording what you sent.
The date you were served, not the date printed on the form and not the date you got around to reading it. Log the day it arrives so the start date is fixed from the outset.
Where your own income particulars are necessary to determine child support, yes — the form requires you to send equivalent information along with the Notice. Log that package the same way you log everything else you send.
Under the Federal Child Support Guidelines, a written request for updated income documents can be made no more than once a year once a child support order is in place. Comparing the date of each request against your log is how you check that.
The Federal Child Support Guidelines let a court draw an adverse inference, impute income, award costs up to full compensation, or find a spouse in contempt and order the documents provided. These are outcomes a court can reach on application, not something that happens automatically.
Property disclosure runs on its own track. Under the Family Property Act, each spouse or adult interdependent partner in an application must file with the court, and serve on the other party, a sworn statement disclosing particulars of all of their property. Log it the same way you log income disclosure — what was filed, on what date.
The Court of King's Bench of Alberta has sole jurisdiction over divorce and the division of property in the province, and the Alberta Rules of Court govern the procedure in front of it, for represented and self-represented people alike.
Last reviewed September 2026. Researched and written by Neta, founder of SortMyDivorce. I am not a lawyer and this is not legal advice — laws, fees and forms change, so please confirm current details with the official sources above or a local family lawyer.
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