A support judgment worth $387,919 arrived years too late to claim the surplus
When claims collide over the same money, timing wins. An Ontario court ruled a family support order cannot outrank creditors that lined up years earlier.
The decision in Fogler Rubinoff LLP v Eslami-Manouchehri, 2026 ONSC 3325, released June 5, 2026, sorted out who had first claim to the cash left after a property was sold out from under a borrower who had defaulted on his mortgage.
Firm Capital Mortgage Fund Inc. held the mortgage on a property owned by Alireza Pardazi Moghaddam. After he defaulted, the property was sold and, once the mortgage and other creditors were paid, $215,563.58 sat in trust with the law firm Fogler Rubinoff. With several parties claiming the money, the firm asked the court to decide who got what, and an interpleader order followed in January 2021. By March 31, 2026, the account had grown to $236,405.45.
Four execution creditors lined up for the funds: the Bank of Montreal, the Toronto-Dominion Bank, Amex Bank of Canada, and a private creditor, Shohreh Eslami-Manouchehri. Then the borrower's former spouse, Zahra Salimi Marand, stepped in. She held a family court order from September 17, 2025, granting her $387,919 in spousal and child support.
Salimi Marand argued her judgment should rank ahead of the banks and the other creditors. She asked the court to invalidate their writs and to set aside an earlier default judgment that Eslami-Manouchehri held against her former spouse.
Associate Justice Jolley rejected every part of that argument. Priority among creditors, the judge held, is fixed when the fund is created - here, when the property sale closed in January 2020. At that point, the banks and Eslami-Manouchehri already held execution judgments against the borrower. The support order did not exist for another five years and could not reach back to leapfrog them.
The court leaned on settled authority, including a 2013 Ontario case the judge called nearly identical, where a child support order obtained days after a sale was denied priority over earlier judgment creditors. Under Ontario's Creditors' Relief Act, 2010, the ruling said, the order of payment cannot be rewritten on fairness grounds alone.
The judge acknowledged the spouse's situation was difficult but said sympathy for one claimant cannot override the certainty that lenders and the wider credit system depend on. The court also renewed an execution writ for the Toronto-Dominion Bank that had lapsed in 2024, noting the bank had never abandoned its claim and had taken part in the proceedings since 2021.
For advisors and firms whose clients carry judgment debt or face family law exposure, the takeaway is plain: the calendar controls. A claim that lands after a pool of money already exists, however sympathetic, generally falls in behind creditors already in line.
Eslami-Manouchehri, who carried the cost of responding on behalf of the group, was awarded $25,000 from the proceeds. The rest will be divided among the four execution creditors, with Eslami-Manouchehri and the Bank of Montreal taking the largest shares.
