510
edits
Changes
→Two important statutes, one important regulation and one influential paper
Every now and then the government reorganizes all the laws it has made into one set of books, sorting the laws alphabetically. When that happens, SBC is replaced by '''RSBC''', which stands for the "Revised Statutes of British Columbia," and the law gets a new chapter number. The old ''Family Relations Act'', the law the ''Family Law Act'' replaced, first became law in 1978. However, the statutes of British Columbia were consolidated in 1996, and when that happened, the title of the ''Family Relations Act'' became the '''''Family Relations Act'', RSBC 1996, c. 128'''.
Other provinces and the federal government follow the same pattern. The title of Alberta's ''Family Law Act'' is the ''Family Law Act'', SA 2003, c. F-4.5 (Statutes of Alberta, 2003, chapter F-4.5) , and the title of the ''Divorce Act'' is the ''Divorce Act'', RSC 1985, c. 3 (2nd Supp.) (Revised Statutes of Canada of 1985, chapter 3, second supplement).
The individual rules in a statute are broken down into numbered paragraphs, called '''sections'''. This helps people identify the specific rule they are talking about. This is section 23 of the ''Family Law Act'':