Can You Be Charged With Assault For Defending Your Spouse?

Imagine this, your spouse is being viciously attacked in public, and you step in to defend her, and suddenly you’re in handcuffs. Can that happen? We’re here to answer common questions on our YouTube channel in plain language. We’re going to answer this question; can you be charged for defending your spouse in Canada?

Let’s break it down, shall we, and use some common examples for you as well. Under Section 34 of the Canadian criminal code, you are allowed to defend your spouse. Let’s say your boyfriend or girlfriends being attacked or under the threat of an imminent attack, and you step in to defend them so those conditions exist, so they’re under threat, they’re being assaulted, and you’ve stepped in. Now, what can you do? You can use reasonable force to protect them. You can’t act excessively. You can’t for example, someone punches your spouse, and you punch them back, and they’re subdued and now unconscious. You can’t keep beating them. That’s excessive force.

So, there’s a fine gray area there. You have to act with reasonableness circumstances and not excessively. So, there you have it, really, that’s what the situation is in Canada you have. You have to think about section 34 of the Criminal Code and reasonableness. So, It’s a very interesting topic, because there’s many situations where spouses will do a bit too much vengeance. Let me give you an example. Let’s say you’ve subdued the attack. The person’s now run off. You chase them down, and you even beat them more obviously excessive.

Let me give you some other examples. Let’s say you’re in a bar, someone pushes your wife hard, and she moves back and you walk in and push them, and they go back, and that’s the end of the matter. Clearly, self-defense. You can protect them. Let’s say someone punches your spouse. You punch them, it’s over, but you can act certainly, if that person continues to fight with you, you can continue to protect yourself now, as well as hers. At some point it becomes a self-defense thing as well, but you have to. You can’t start taking a baseball bat that somebody did a push as an example.

I know those are extreme examples, but there’s a lot of gray areas, and this is where people get charged.

Sometimes they get charged in the gray areas, and then they have to defend themselves in court, and a good lawyer can often win those cases because you may have acted reasonably. I mean, you’re not expected to weigh the nicety of your blows, like, for example, someone punches your spouse and you punch them once and results in them hitting the curb and dying. Well, that still can be self-defence, believe it or not. You didn’t act excessively you knew you had to do a punch and it had unfortunately dire, devastating consequences, so just act reasonably in the circumstances. Obviously, we’re going to protect our spouses and we’re going to try and wreck risby, but once it gets into excessiveness, you could be charged with a serious criminal offense. So there you have it. Stay safe. Stay protected. Know your rights in Canada, and that’s a little bit of a price C on how to protect your spouse responsibly and under Section 34 of criminal code.