By Neta, founder of SortMyDivorce · Updated
A financial disclosure statement in Alberta usually isn't one document — it's whatever a Notice to Disclose, a court order or a demand letter from the other side's lawyer has just asked you to produce. What you send next, and how you prove you sent it, depends on which of those three is now in front of you. This guide is for Alberta. Family matters here can proceed in the Court of King's Bench or the Alberta Court of Justice, and the form referred to throughout this page — Form FL-17, the Notice to Disclose — is specific to Alberta's rules. Other provinces use different forms and different rules for the same request.
| What it is | A Notice to Disclose, Form FL-17 under the Alberta Rules of Court, used to request income and other financial information from the other party. |
|---|---|
| Where it's dealt with | Family matters in Alberta can proceed in the Court of King's Bench or the Alberta Court of Justice. |
| What it can request | Only documents that are relevant and material to the proceeding. |
| If filed on the narrower track | Only items 1 to 9 on the form may be requested unless the Court orders otherwise. |
| If the documents aren't provided within a month | "within one month of being served with the notice to disclose." Verified from rule 12.41(7). After that, the Court may order the documents by a set date, draw an adverse inference and impute income, or order costs. |
| If your own income is also relevant | It goes out with the notice when needed for shared or split parenting, or for section 7 expenses. |
| How often updated income can be requested | No more than once a year after a support order has been made. |
| If disclosure is never provided | The other spouse can apply for a hearing, move for judgment, or apply for an order compelling production. |
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Three different documents get called "financial disclosure" in the same file, and each one sets a different clock. A Notice to Disclose — Form FL-17 under the Alberta Rules of Court — is the one with a numbered list attached, filed by the other party to request income and other financial information from you. A demand letter from the other side's lawyer is not the same thing: it can ask for the same documents, but it doesn't carry the form's numbering or its rule references. A court order is different again. The notice to disclose procedure sits alongside, not instead of, any other disclosure procedure or obligation under the rules or under an enactment, so more than one of these can be live in your file at once. Read the document you were actually served with before you start assembling anything — the numbering, the deadline language and what happens if you don't respond all depend on which one it is.
If what arrived is a Notice to Disclose, rule 12.41(7) is the one that matters: the Court's response to a missed package is measured from one month after you were served with the notice. Record the date it was served, how it reached you, and who delivered it, in writing, on the day it happens. That record is what lets you say — months later, if it comes up — exactly when the file's clock started and how the notice reached you, rather than relying on memory.
A Notice to Disclose can only ask for documents that are relevant and material to the proceeding, and where it was filed on the narrower track, only items 1 to 9 on the form may be requested unless the Court has ordered otherwise. Go down the form item by item rather than assembling documents in whatever order you find them. For each numbered item, mark it sent, not applicable, or not currently in your possession. If your own income information is also needed to work out child support — shared or split parenting, or section 7 expenses, are the situations where this comes up — send your equivalent information out with the notice rather than waiting to be asked separately. A package that tracks against the form's own numbering is the one that's easiest to check later, by you or by anyone reading the file after you.
Keep a copy of every document you send, exactly as sent, before it leaves your hands — not a note that you sent it, the document itself. Keep the covering letter or email that listed what was enclosed and against which numbered item. Keep proof of transmission with a date on it: a sent-mail record, a courier receipt, a read confirmation. The documents you disclosed and the record that you disclosed them are two different things, and only one of them survives if you're asked to reconstruct the exchange later without your own copy.
How you send a disclosure package changes what proof you end up with. Email leaves a timestamp and, often, a delivery or read receipt. Courier leaves a signed delivery record. Lawyer-to-lawyer transmission leaves whatever the sending lawyer's office keeps and confirms. Personal service leaves whatever proof of service the method requires. Proof of service in a Divorce Act proceeding is governed by the law of evidence of the province the proceeding is in, so the form the proof needs to take — an affidavit of service, for instance — is a question of Alberta law specifically, not a general rule. Whatever the method, write down the date, the method and what was included at the time you send it, not from memory afterwards.
A reply that goes back over the same numbered list, item by item, is the one that stays readable if anyone else has to follow the exchange later — a case conference, a mediator, a later affidavit. For each item raised, say what was already sent and when, or where it stands if it wasn't. Keep the reply itself, dated, with whatever you attach to it, in the same file as the original package.
If a period passes with nothing back, note the date it should have arrived, what was asked for and when, and any reminder you sent. A dated log of requests and reminders reads as a record; a folder of unsorted emails doesn't, and the difference matters if it's ever looked at by someone who wasn't part of the exchange. Where disclosure isn't provided, the other spouse can apply to have the matter set down for a hearing, move for judgment, or apply for an order compelling production of the documents. A court that finds the continuing income-disclosure obligation wasn't met can find that spouse in contempt and award costs meant to fully compensate the other side; where a disclosure order itself isn't complied with, the court can strike out pleadings. None of that happens automatically — it happens because someone applied, with a record to point to.
Financial disclosure in a support case isn't necessarily a single exchange. Once a support order is in place, either party can ask for updated income information, but no more than once every year. Separately, where a support order has already been made, the paying spouse must, on written request, provide the listed income documents for any of the three most recent tax years that haven't already been provided. Anyone who is a shareholder, self-employed, a partner in a partnership or a beneficiary under a trust has an additional layer on top of that: further information for the preceding tax year. Track each round the same way as the first — dated request, dated package, dated proof — rather than starting a new system for the second one.
A case conference, a mediation session or a later affidavit all draw on the same correspondence you've already been keeping. Family matters in Alberta can proceed in the Court of King's Bench, which has sole jurisdiction over the divorce itself and the division of property, or in the Alberta Court of Justice, which also hears family matters. Either way, what gets attached is the record you already have — the notice, the package, the covering letter, the proof of sending, the reply — in the order it happened. A thread that's already dated and numbered is something you attach; one that isn't is something you have to rebuild first.
It's Form FL-17 under the Alberta Rules of Court, filed by one party to request income and other financial information from the other. It can only request documents that are relevant and material to the proceeding, and on the narrower filing track, only items 1 to 9 on the form unless the Court orders otherwise.
Family matters can proceed in the Court of King's Bench, which has sole jurisdiction over the divorce and the division of property, or in the Alberta Court of Justice, which also hears family cases.
Under rule 12.41(7), if the documents haven't been provided within one month of the notice being served, the Court may order them provided by a specified date, draw an adverse inference and impute income, or order costs.
No more than once a year after a support order has been made. Separately, the paying spouse must, on written request, provide the listed income documents for any of the three most recent tax years not already provided.
Where the serving party's own income particulars are needed to work out child support — shared or split parenting, or section 7 expenses — that party sends equivalent information out along with the notice, rather than only requesting the other side's.
The other spouse can apply to have the matter set down for a hearing, move for judgment, or apply for an order compelling production. Non-compliance with the continuing disclosure obligations can lead to a finding of contempt and a costs award; non-compliance with a disclosure order can lead to pleadings being struck.
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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