in a maintenance case where the wife is claiming that legal costs are a monthly outgoing, is the husband requesting to receipts as proof a breach of solicitor-client privilege? this is a common law territory
Answer by cyanne2ak
In the USA it would be. I don't know about other places at all.
Answer by northernhick
No. At least, not in Canada, but I'm pretty sure the same applies to other c/l jurisdictions too.
There's a doctrine called "waiver by implication". If you put in issue communications between you and your solicitor, then in doing so you've waived privilege. It happens most often in litigation where good faith of a party is in issue, and the party defends allegations of bad faith by saying that he acted in accordance with legal advice. By raising that defence, you put the legal advice in issue, waive the privilege, and allow the other side to put the lawyer who gave you the advice on the stand.
The waiver here would probably be limited, and I suspect that the invoices the husband would receive would be heavily blacked out, but in a circumstance of this nature, privilege will have been waived in regards of the raw numbers at least.
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