By Neta, founder of SortMyDivorce · Updated
"This offer remains open for acceptance until 5 pm on Friday, after which it will be withdrawn." Almost every settlement offer in a divorce carries a sentence like that, and almost everyone who receives one treats the date as a cliff. Sometimes it is. Often it is not. This guide separates the two kinds of offer, the informal one in a lawyer's letter and the formal one made under court rules, and explains what the expiry date does in each case, what it cannot do, and what to write before it passes. This guide covers Alberta and British Columbia from the rules themselves, and Ontario from the court's own guidance. Formal offers to settle exist in most Canadian provinces and, in a weaker form, in some United States jurisdictions; the separate guide on formal offers covers the cross-border picture. The section on informal offers is about general contract principles and applies broadly, with local variation.
| Two kinds of offer | An informal offer in a lawyer's letter, governed by contract principles and by whatever the letter says; and a formal offer made under a court rule, with consequences the rule attaches. |
|---|---|
| An informal expiry date | Ends the offer as a thing you can accept by return. It does not end negotiation, and the same terms can be re-offered the next day. |
| Alberta formal offers | Rule 4.24(3): open "until the expiry of 2 months after service of the offer or any longer period specified in the offer," or until the trial or hearing starts, whichever is first. |
| Alberta withdrawal | Rule 4.24(4): a valid formal offer "may not be withdrawn unless the Court first gives permission." |
| Alberta consequence | Rule 4.29: a party who beats their own unaccepted offer at trial gets double costs for steps after service. |
| BC formal offers | Rule 11-1: written, served, and containing the sentence reserving the right to bring it to the court's attention on costs; the court "may consider an offer to settle" and may "award double costs." |
| Ontario | Rule 18 governs offers; an offer to settle is mandatory for the settlement conference and is "a confidential document" that "does not go into the continuing record." |
| Before the date passes | Write: accept, reject, counter, or ask for time, and say which. Silence is the only response that gives you nothing. |
Keeping track of dates like these across a stack of letters is exactly what SortMyDivorce does — start a free trial, no card needed.
Most offers in a divorce are letters. Your spouse's lawyer writes to your lawyer setting out terms and a date by which they must be accepted. No court rule creates that offer; it is a proposal to contract, and general contract principles govern it.
Three things follow, and they are all more modest than the letter's tone suggests.
The offer can be accepted until it is withdrawn or expires. A stated expiry date is the offeror telling you when it lapses. Accept in writing before then and, subject to whatever formalities a binding separation agreement needs in your province, there is a deal. Accept after, and there is not, unless the other side chooses to treat your late acceptance as a fresh offer and accept it.
Expiry ends the offer, not the negotiation. Nothing prevents the other side from making the same offer again on Monday, and nothing prevents you from proposing it back to them. The deadline is a pressure device. It has no effect on what either of you can propose afterwards.
A counter-offer is a rejection. Under ordinary contract principles, responding with different terms ends the original offer; you cannot then go back and accept it unless the other side revives it. That is the one place where the timing of what you write matters more than the deadline itself. If you want to keep the original offer alive while you explore a variation, say so in terms: a question about whether they would consider a change is not the same as a counter-offer.
What an informal deadline cannot do is create a legal consequence for letting it pass. There is no costs rule attached to a lawyer's letter. The consequence is practical: the other side may harden, may move on, may not make the offer again. Those are real, but they are not the cliff the sentence implies.
A formal offer to settle is a different instrument. It is made under a court rule, in a form the rule prescribes or with words the rule requires, and the rule attaches consequences at the end of the case, usually about who pays whose legal costs. The expiry rules for formal offers are set by the rule, not by the letter.
Alberta's Rule 4.24 governs. Subrule (2) requires a formal offer to be in Form 22 and to include, among other things, "what the offer is and any conditions attached to it," "the requirements that must be complied with to accept the offer," "a form of acceptance of the offer," and "notice of the costs consequences specified in rule 4.29."
The expiry rule is subrule (3): "Unless a valid formal offer to settle is withdrawn under subrule (4), the offer remains open for acceptance until (a) the expiry of 2 months after service of the offer or any longer period specified in the offer, or (b) the start of a streamlined trial, the start of a trial or the start of a hearing of an application, as the case may be, whichever occurs first."
So an Alberta formal offer cannot be made to expire on Friday. It stays open for at least two months from service, or longer if the offer says so, unless the trial or hearing starts first. And it cannot simply be pulled. Subrule (4): "A valid formal offer to settle may not be withdrawn unless (a) the Court first gives permission for the withdrawal, which may be given only if the Court is satisfied that there are special circumstances that justify withdrawal, and (b) the party who made the offer serves written notice of withdrawal on every party who received the offer."
Acceptance is also regulated. Rule 4.25(2): a party may accept "by (a) filing the offer and the acceptance of it, and (b) serving on the party who made the offer notice that (i) the offer has been accepted, and (ii) the terms of any judgment or order in the offer have been agreed to." After that, under 4.25(3), a party may "apply to the Court for judgment or an order in accordance with the terms of the formal offer to settle."
Two protections travel with the offer. Rule 4.27: unless the parties agree otherwise, a formal offer "is to be considered as an offer to settle that is made without prejudice, and is not an admission of anything." Rule 4.28(1): it "is to be kept confidential and not disclosed to the Court until (a) it is accepted, or (b) the remedy for the claim has been decided."
And the consequence, in Rule 4.29. Subrule (1): a plaintiff whose unaccepted formal offer is matched or beaten at trial "is entitled to double the costs to which the plaintiff would otherwise have been entitled … for all steps taken in relation to the action or claim after service of the offer, excluding disbursements." Subrule (2): a defendant in the same position "is entitled to costs for all steps taken in the action … after service of the offer," and under subrule (3), double costs if the claim is dismissed. Subrule (4) removes the consequence for an offer made "less than 10 days before the date scheduled for the trial to start," among other cases.
BC's Rule 11-1 takes a different approach: it does not fix an expiry period, and it leaves the consequence to the court's discretion. An "offer to settle" under the rule is one that "is made in writing by a party to a family law case," "has been served on all parties," and "contains the following sentence: 'The [party(ies)], [name(s) of party(ies)], reserve(s) the right to bring this offer to the attention of the court for consideration in relation to costs after the court has pronounced judgment on all other issues in this proceeding.'"
That sentence is what makes a letter a formal offer in BC. Without it, the offer is informal and Rule 11-1 does not apply.
The protections: subrule (2), the fact of the offer "must not be disclosed to the court or jury, or set out in any document used in the family law case, until all issues in the family law case, other than costs, have been determined"; subrule (3), "An offer to settle is not an admission."
The consequences: subrule (4), "The court may consider an offer to settle when exercising the court's discretion in relation to costs," and subrule (5), the court may deprive a party of costs after the offer, "award double costs of all or some of the steps taken in the family law case after the date of delivery or service of the offer to settle," or award the offering party its costs where it "obtained a judgment as favourable as, or more favourable than, the terms of the offer." Subrule (6) lists what the court considers, beginning with "whether the offer to settle was one that ought reasonably to have been accepted, either on the date that the offer to settle was delivered or served or on any later date," and "the relative financial circumstances of the parties."
The phrase "or on any later date" matters for expiry. In BC the question is not only whether you should have accepted by the stated date, but whether you should have accepted at any point afterwards while it remained open.
Ontario's Rule 18 governs offers to settle in family cases. The rule itself could not be read for this page, but the Ontario Court of Justice's guidance states three things about it plainly. "Rule 18 of the Family Law Rules applies to Offers to Settle." For a settlement conference, "you must also complete an Offer to Settle. This is mandatory." And "The Offer to Settle is a confidential document and does not go into the continuing record."
Form 17C, the settlement conference brief, carries the mechanism in its own words at Part 4: "The other side can accept your offer. And if the other side does accept it, the accepted offer becomes a binding contract and can be turned into a court order that can be enforced against you. The other side can make a counter-offer." And: "If you have already made an offer and it is still open for acceptance, attach a copy to this brief."
The separate guide to formal offers covers Ontario's costs consequences and the position elsewhere.
An expiry date, formal or informal, is an invitation to do one of four things in writing. The only response that gives you nothing is none.
Accept. In the form the offer or the rule requires. In Alberta, that means filing the offer and acceptance and serving notice under Rule 4.25. For an informal offer, a clear written acceptance of the terms as offered.
Reject. A one-line letter. It ends the offer and leaves you free to propose anything.
Counter. New terms. Understand that this ends the original offer under ordinary contract principles, and if there is a formal offer in play, ask your lawyer how a counter interacts with it under your rules.
Ask for time, and say why. "We are obtaining a valuation and will respond by [date]" is a response. A request for time is not an acceptance, and the other side can refuse it, but it puts on the record that the delay was reasoned. In BC, where the court asks whether an offer "ought reasonably to have been accepted," a documented reason for not accepting yet is worth having.
Whichever you choose, record the date the offer was made, the date it says it closes, and the date of your response, in one place. Settlement offers in a divorce come in rounds, and the guide to tracking every offer explains why the sequence matters more than any single letter.
Verification note. Ontario's Rule 18 could not be read from e-Laws for this page; the Ontario section rests on the court's guidance and the prescribed form only, and does not describe Rule 18's costs consequences or its own expiry provisions. The statements about informal offers, counter-offers and lapse are general principles of contract law, not quotations from any statute, and how they interact with the formalities for a binding separation agreement in your province is a question for your lawyer.
For an informal offer, yes; the offeror sets the terms and can withdraw at any time before acceptance. For a formal offer in Alberta, no: Rule 4.24(4) requires the court's permission to withdraw, and Rule 4.24(3) keeps the offer open for at least two months after service. Check which kind you have.
It has lapsed, which means you cannot accept it by return. It can be re-offered, and you can propose the same terms back. What is gone is your ability to bind the other side to it unilaterally.
A genuine question does not. A response proposing different terms does, under ordinary contract principles. If you want to explore a variation without losing the original, say expressly that you are not counter-offering and that the original offer remains under consideration.
A formal offer is made under a court rule, in the form or with the words the rule requires, and the rule attaches consequences, usually about costs, if it is not accepted and the result at trial is no better. A letter's deadline has practical weight and no legal consequence of its own.
Not until the case is decided, in Alberta and BC: Rule 4.28 and Rule 11-1(2) both keep the offer from the court until the merits are dealt with. Ontario's court guidance calls the offer "a confidential document" that does not go into the continuing record. The separate guides on "without prejudice" cover the broader privilege.
No. Accept an offer because it is one you can live with; the guide on whether to accept a settlement offer sets out how to decide. A deadline is a reason to respond, not a reason to agree.
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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