Mohammed Shafia and his wife Tobba Yahya speak at their Montreal home about the loss of their children, in this photo taken shortly before their arrest. (Peter McCabe/ Canadian Press)

A Montreal husband and wife, accused of murdering three of their teenage daughters and the man's first wife in June, were briefly in court Friday in Kingston to try to ask for some contact with three of their remaining children.

Mohammed Shafia, 56, and Tooba Mohammed Yahya, 39, are in their fourth month in custody, awaiting a preliminary hearing on the murder charges. They have been forbidden since late August from communicating with a son and daughter, both in their mid-teens, and an eight-year-old daughter.

They're also forbidden from communicating with each other and with their eldest son, Hamed Mohammed Shafia, 18, who is charged witih murder as well. Like his parents, he remains in custody but was in court Friday.

But the defence application, which seeks to have a judge cancel the non-communication order, didn't proceed.

Superior Court Justice Richard Byers was told by assistant Crown attorney Gerard Laarhuis that motion was "untimely."

Byers adjourned it without a fixed date of return. The motion can be brought back before a Superior Court judge at any time with five days' notice to the court.

The three Shafias were arrested in late July, almost a month after the bodies of sisters Zainab Shafia, 19, Sahar, 17, and Geeti, 13, were discovered with that of Rona Amir Mohammed, 50, inside a submerged car in the Rideau Canal.

The older woman was initially identified by the family as a cousin but her surviving relatives claim she was actually Mohammed Shafia's wife of 30 years and that he didn't divorce her before or after marrying his co-accused, the mother of his seven children.