Some terms in the Divorce Act will change on March 1, 2021
Effective March 1, 2021, the federal Divorce Act will use terms similar to those in the BC Family Law Act.
- The term decision-making responsibility will replace custody to describe the responsibility for making important decisions and getting information about the children after separating.
- The term parenting time will be used to describe the time that a spouse spends with their child and is responsible for supervising and caring for the child.
- The term contact will be used instead of access to describe the time children spend with a person who isn't a spouse. This includes grandparents, aunts and uncles, and others.
You'll have to make some important decisions about how you're going to care for any children if:
- you stop living with your children's other parent, or
- you and your spouse:
- have children together, but
- don't live together.
But you also need to know what words to use when you're talking about looking after the children.
In BC, the provincial laws about who looks after the children when a couple separates were changed in 2013 to:
- get away from the idea of winning and losing that the words custody and access suggest, and
- focus more on parents' responsibility for their children.
The people who suggested this new way of looking at parenting after separation hoped it will encourage both parents to look after their children, even if the roles and responsibilities of each parent are different.
But it's also a bit confusing, because now the federal and provincial laws:
- use different words to talk about parenting after separation, and
- look at parenting after separation in two different ways.
Click Family Law Act or Divorce Act to find out:
- which words the law uses, and
- what the words mean.
Which words should you use?
In BC, most of the time judges and lawyers use the Family Law Act words: parenting time, guardianship, and parental responsibilities.
The federal government has recently introduced changes to the Divorce Act. If they're accepted by Parliament, the Divorce Act and the Family Law Act will use the same words.
So it's probably easiest to use the words in the Family Law Act.
To find out more, see: