An Ontario Superior Court judge has set aside a separation agreement signed by a married couple in 2016 after finding that the document did not accurately reflect their circumstances, was signed without financial disclosure or legal advice, and contained significant inconsistencies about when the parties had separated and what they had agreed to.
In Sagoo v. Sagoo, 2026 ONSC 4755, Justice J. Breithaupt Smith also determined that Upneet Kaur Sagoo and Rajinder Sagoo finally separated on March 3, 2014, rejecting both Upneet’s position that the marriage continued until 2021 and Rajinder’s position that the final separation occurred in late 2008 or early 2009.
The August 18, 2026 decision followed a focused 10-day trial held in June, with closing submissions heard on July 17. The trial did not resolve all of the financial issues arising from the end of the marriage. Instead, it dealt primarily with the validity and enforceability of a purported separation agreement and the date on which the marriage finally broke down. Those findings are expected to affect the property and support issues that remain to be decided.
The couple remained legally married at the time of the trial and have an adult son, identified in the decision as Y.
Their relationship had been unstable for many years. The court found that the parties initially separated in 2007 and that Upneet spent most of her time living elsewhere between 2007 and 2009. For a period, she returned to live with Rajinder and their son while completing her post-secondary education, during which Rajinder financially supported her.
By late 2008 or early 2009, Rajinder believed the relationship had ended after learning that Upneet had been involved in a sexual relationship with another person. The court found that Upneet had more than one intimate relationship with other partners during and after 2009.
The couple’s financial lives also became largely separate. They did not maintain joint bank accounts or shared credit facilities after 2009, and neither had meaningful access to the other’s financial information. Rajinder became the primary parent of their son, while the court found that Upneet did not provide financial support for the child or meaningfully participate in his upbringing after 2009, although she continued to visit occasionally.
Upneet consulted a family lawyer in 2009 and again in 2012. On both occasions, draft separation agreements were prepared, although neither document was signed at the time and the evidence did not establish whether either draft was presented to Rajinder.
The parties continued to have some contact despite living largely separate lives. Justice Breithaupt Smith found that they last had sexual intercourse on March 2 or March 3, 2014, shortly before Rajinder left Canada to work in Thailand and took their son with him with Upneet’s consent.
That departure became central to the court’s determination of the final separation date.
Rajinder testified that when he left for Thailand, he had no intention of returning to Canada to resume living with Upneet. The court also found that Upneet did not travel overseas to live with Rajinder or their son and did not intend to do so.
The parties nevertheless remained in communication and maintained a relationship that included financial assistance, family interactions and, years later, sexually explicit online exchanges. The court was required to determine whether those interactions demonstrated that their marriage had continued, or had been revived, after Rajinder’s departure.
A separate issue arose from a document the parties signed in July 2016 that purported to be a separation agreement.
Under Ontario’s Family Law Act, domestic contracts such as separation agreements must be in writing, signed by the parties and witnessed. Courts also have authority under section 56(4) of the Act to set aside a domestic contract in certain circumstances, including where one spouse failed to disclose significant assets or debts, where a party did not understand the nature or consequences of the agreement, or where ordinary principles of contract law justify setting it aside.
Justice Breithaupt Smith found several serious problems with the 2016 document.
The document contained internally inconsistent dates. Although the agreement was signed in July 2016, the parties attempted to give portions of it an earlier effective date. References to 2012 on the first and last pages were crossed out and replaced with 2009, with both spouses initialling the changes.
Their witnesses, however, did not initial those changes.
The agreement also stated that the couple had separated on January 22, 2007, even though the court heard no evidence explaining why that particular date had been selected.
The judge found that other provisions did not accurately describe the family’s circumstances. The agreement stated that the parents shared equal parenting of their son, even though the child was primarily living with Rajinder outside Canada.
It also purported to waive any future child support claim regardless of changes in the parties’ financial circumstances. There had been no exchange of financial disclosure before the agreement was signed. Neither party had independent legal advice about the agreement.
The evidence about the circumstances surrounding its signing was also unreliable. Upneet maintained that she did not understand what she was signing and had not obtained legal advice. Rajinder testified that he believed the document would make them “legally separated,” although the court noted that Canadian law does not recognize a separate legal status of being “legally separated” in that sense.
Rajinder also said that he signed the agreement because Upneet was refusing to sign documents required to renew their son’s travel documentation unless the agreement was first completed. Both parties agreed that the purported separation agreement was signed before the child’s travel documents were dealt with.
Neither spouse called the person who purportedly witnessed their signature, even though the witnesses were professionals. One was a lawyer and the other was a law clerk and commissioner of oaths.
Justice Breithaupt Smith concluded that the document did not reflect the parties’ actual circumstances and that neither party understood its long-term legal and financial consequences.
“Simply stated, the purported agreement did not reflect reality,” the judge wrote.
The court found that both spouses signed while lacking information about the other’s financial circumstances and without legal advice. Each was also influenced by external pressures at the time.
The judge set aside the agreement in its entirety under sections 55(1), 56(1.1) and 56(4) of the Family Law Act.
That ruling eliminated the need for the court to determine whether a spousal support waiver contained in the agreement was independently enforceable, or whether later attempts at reconciliation would have cancelled the agreement under its own terms.
The court then turned to the more difficult question of when the marriage had finally ended.
Under the Divorce Act, spouses are considered separated when they live apart and at least one of them intends to live separately from the other. A short period of resumed cohabitation for reconciliation purposes does not necessarily interrupt the separation if it lasts no more than 90 days.
The date is also important under Ontario’s Family Law Act because the “valuation date” used for dividing family property is generally the date when the spouses separate and there is no reasonable prospect that they will resume living together in a conjugal relationship.
Justice Breithaupt Smith relied on the Ontario Court of Appeal’s 2025 decision in Kassabian v. Marcarian, which requires courts to examine the relationship as a whole. Relevant considerations include the nature of the relationship, the couple’s financial arrangements, how they represented themselves to other people, formal steps taken to end the marriage and any genuine efforts to resume cohabitation. The analysis is objective and does not depend on a single factor.
The evidence following Rajinder’s 2014 move to Thailand was mixed.
Rajinder and the parties’ son continued to visit Canada, generally for about three weeks at a time, but stayed at Rajinder’s sister’s home. Their visits with Upneet were limited and usually lasted only a few hours.
The only occasion after 2014 when Upneet and Rajinder slept under the same roof occurred in late 2017 while they were moving belongings from two storage lockers in the Greater Toronto Area. They spent one night in the same room with their teenage son. The court found that this did not amount to resumed cohabitation.
The couple also appeared together in photographs during some Canadian visits. The judge found that the photographs did not establish the continuation of a marital relationship.
In April 2017, Rajinder and the parties’ son travelled to India and visited Upneet’s grandmother and extended family. Rajinder continued to refer to Upneet’s mother as “Mom,” but the court accepted his explanation that this was a culturally respectful form of address rather than evidence that the marriage remained intact.
Another episode occurred in August 2017, when the couple visited a jewelry store. Rajinder placed an order for an authentic version of a costume ring that Upneet had tried on. He later cancelled the order and retained a $495 store credit.
The parties also continued to use the initial “J” as a pet name for one another, referring to a word meaning “life.”
Justice Breithaupt Smith accepted that these circumstances demonstrated an ongoing personal connection, but found that they did not outweigh the broader evidence that the marriage had ended.
The parties’ financial relationship provided further evidence of separation. In 2017, Upneet asked Rajinder to help her find rental housing. Rajinder obtained the assistance of a realtor and referred to Upneet as his wife during those discussions. Eventually, Rajinder sold an existing investment property and purchased a house at 770 Brandenburg Boulevard in Waterloo. The property closed on November 22, 2017. Upneet signed agreements of purchase and sale on Rajinder’s behalf and was given a limited power of attorney for the real estate transactions, although Rajinder ultimately returned to Canada to complete the closing documents himself. The property was registered solely in Rajinder’s name.
The court found that the arrangement served several purposes. Rajinder maintained a Canadian investment property, Upneet obtained stable housing in exchange for maintaining the property, and their son would have a place to live if he later attended university in Canada.
The judge found that the purchase was not evidence of a marital reconciliation.
That conclusion was supported by messages exchanged shortly after closing. On November 25, 2017, Upneet described the arrangement as a “mutually beneficial professional undertaking” and criticized Rajinder for believing that they were reconciling. On December 2, she asked him for a written lease confirming her tenancy.
Rajinder initially paid utilities associated with the property, but Upneet had taken over those payments by 2019 at the latest. He also provided other financial assistance on occasion, including $2,000 toward vehicle repairs and payments for some telephone and security expenses.
The court characterized much of that assistance as support provided when Upneet was experiencing housing instability or other financial difficulties, rather than evidence that the spouses had resumed their marriage.
The parties continued to have sexual communication online much later. The evidence established that they exchanged sexually explicit messages, images and videos until November 3, 2021.
That evidence supported Upneet’s position that some form of intimate connection continued long after 2014, but the judge found that it did not establish that the spouses had resumed living together as a married couple or that there was a reasonable prospect of reconciliation.
The court also reviewed messages in which Upneet referred to the marriage in the past tense. In one example cited in the decision, she referred to something Rajinder had done “when we were married.”
Other messages that Upneet characterized as affectionate communications from Rajinder were found to have actually been sent by the parties’ son using Rajinder’s device.
Credibility became an important issue at trial.
Justice Breithaupt Smith said she approached Upneet’s evidence with awareness of traumatic experiences she had endured, including housing instability and assaults by other men, and allowed for the possibility that trauma affected her ability to recall precise dates or the sequence of events.
The judge nevertheless found that some of Upneet’s evidence had been intentionally fabricated, including her description of messages sent by the parties’ son as messages from Rajinder.
Rajinder’s evidence was generally preferred where the parties disagreed about their relationship history, although the judge also identified problems with his testimony. His description of the circumstances surrounding the signing of the 2016 agreement changed several times, and some of the text message evidence he presented was incomplete or selective.
After considering the relationship as a whole, the court concluded that March 3, 2014 was the point when the marriage had irretrievably broken down and there was no reasonable prospect of the spouses resuming cohabitation.
The judge found that Rajinder’s departure for Thailand with their son, following the couple’s final physical sexual encounter, marked the effective conclusion of the relationship. Their later financial dealings, family visits, affectionate terminology and online sexual communications did not establish that they had resumed a marital relationship.
The court therefore fixed March 3, 2014 as both the separation date under the Divorce Act and the valuation date under Ontario’s Family Law Act.
Neither spouse obtained everything they had sought at trial. Upneet succeeded in having the separation agreement set aside, while Rajinder was substantially closer to the court’s determination of an earlier separation date. The judge ultimately selected a date proposed by neither party.
Because success was divided, Justice Breithaupt Smith ordered each party to bear their own legal costs for the focused trial.
The remaining substantive financial issues arising from the marriage, including matters that may be affected by the March 3, 2014 valuation date, were left for later determination.
Read about other family law cases here.
