Difference between revisions of "Guardianship, Parenting Arrangements and Contact"

This page talks about who is presumed to be the guardian of a child, how people can apply to be appointed as the guardian of a child and how people can become a guardian upon the death of a guardian. It also talks about the rights and obligations involved in being a guardian, parental responsibilities and parenting time, and about contact, the time that someone who isn't a guardian may have with a child.

Guardians raise the children in their care by exercising ''parental responsibilities'' in the best interests of the children. Parental responsibilities include deciding where a child goes to school, how a sick child is treated, whether a child is raised in a religion and what sports the child plays after school. All of a child's guardians can exercise all parental responsibilities, or parental responsibilities can be divided between guardians, so that only one or more guardians have the right to make decisions about a particular issue.

The time a guardian has with a child is called ''parenting time''. During parenting time, a guardian is responsible for the care of the child and has decision making authority about day-to-day issues.

Rule 18.1 also requires that the applicant supply a criminal records check and a records check from the Ministry for Children and Family Development dated with 60 days of the filing of the affidavit.

Rule 15-2.1 of the [http://canlii.ca/t/8mcr Supreme Court Family Rules] says much the same thing but requires that the special affidavit, in Form F101, be sworn at least 28 days before a hearing where people will present arguments or at least 7 days before filing if there will not be a hearing. The records checks must no more than 60 days from the date of the hearing.

Links to sample and blank forms, including Form 34 and Form F101, are available in the [[Sample Supreme Court Forms (Family)]] and [[Sample Provincial Court Forms (Family Law)]].

People who are the guardians of a child have ''parental responsibilities'' in respect of that child and their time with the child is called ''parenting time''. Together, parental responsibilities and parenting time are known as ''parenting arrangements''. Section 40 of the ''[[Family Law Act]]'' talks about who has parental responsibilities and parenting time and how they are shared:

You have basically two choices if it becomes important to formalize the parenting arrangements for a child. You can come up with an agreement with the other guardians, by negotiation, mediation or a collaborative settlement process, or, if you can't agree, you can go to court. It sometimes takes awhile for guardians to get to the point where they feel they must get something formal in place. Sometimes, people are just content with the status quo. In cases like this, where a stable set of arrangements has managed to gel over time, s. 48 says that a guardian shouldn't make unilateral changes to those arrangements without talking to the other guardians first:

When a child has more than one guardian, the guardians need to work together and co-operate in raising the children. This can sometimes be difficult, particularly when there is a lot of conflict in the guardians' relationship with one another. Before the ''Family Law Act'' came into effect, the rights and obligations involved in raising children were usually addressed through a joint guardianship order under the ''Family Relations Act'', in particular through two models of joint guardianship, the Horn model and the Joyce model. The ''Family Law Act'' doesn't talk about guardianship the way the old law did and can't be used to spell out guardians' rights and obligations in the same way. However, since guardians need to work together and co-operate in making parenting decisions, the models can still work. They just need to be changed a bit.