The BC Family Law Act applies to all parents. It uses the following terms:

• guardianship
• parental responsibilities
• parenting time
• contact with a child

The Family Law Act emphasizes that it’s in the best interests of children to continue relationships with both parents if possible.

Guardianship

Guardians are generally allowed to make decisions about a child. Not all parents are guardians, and not all guardians are parents.

• If both parents have lived together with the child, both parents are generally guardians.
• If a parent has never lived with the child, but they regularly cared for the child, they’re generally a guardian.
• If a parent isn’t a guardian, they can become a guardian by making a written agreement with the other guardian or getting a court order.
• If one parent wants the other parent to stop being a guardian when they separate, they have to agree or get a court order.
• If you’re asked to give up your guardianship, talk to a lawyer. Once you give up your guardianship, it can be a long process to get it back.
• Non-parents, such as grandparents, aunts, and uncles, can’t become guardians through a written agreement. They must apply in court.

Other guardianship issues for Indigenous parents and guardians

If anyone applies for guardianship of a Nisga’a child or a child of another treaty First Nation, they must give notice to the Nisga’a Lisims government or the child’s Nation. The Nation can then take part in the court proceedings.

If you’re a child’s guardian and you live on reserve, your child can live in the band home with you even if you and your child aren’t band members.

If you aren’t sure about something relating to guardianship, talk to a lawyer.

See Help from a lawyer.

Parenting arrangements

Parental responsibilities and parenting time together are known as parenting arrangements. They must be in the best interests of the children.

Parental responsibilities

Parental responsibilities are the day-to-day decisions and important decisions guardians make about a child, such as their health care, daily care, home life, and schooling. Only guardians can have parental responsibilities and parenting time with a child.

Guardians can agree to divide or share parental responsibilities in whatever way works best for the child. If they can’t agree, a court can make an order.

Parenting time

Parenting time is the time each guardian spends with the child.

• During parenting time, the guardian the child is with makes day-to-day decisions and supervises the child.
• Guardians can share parenting time equally, or one guardian can have the child most of the time. They can arrange parenting time in any way that’s in the best interests of the child.

If the child is Indigenous and resides on reserve, it’s a good idea to include some pick up and drop off locations that are outside the reserve in your agreement or order. This way you won’t have to go back to court later to change the arrangements if you, another guardian, or a person with contact isn’t allowed to come onto reserve lands.

Contact with a child

Contact is the time that a non-guardian spends with the child (including a parent who isn’t a guardian).

• Grandparents, aunts and uncles, step-parents, and other people who might be important to your child can apply to court to have contact with a child. A parent or step-parent who isn’t a spouse can also apply for a contact order. 
• People with contact don’t have a right to make decisions about a child.

The federal Divorce Act applies to parents who are (or used to be) married to each other. The Divorce Act calls them spouses. (Although we still call them parents in this section, you’ll likely see the term spouse used in your legal documents.)

In March 2021, the Divorce Act changed to use words similar to those in the BC Family Law Act to talk about parenting after separation, including:

• decision-making responsibilities
• parenting time
• contact

The Divorce Act also emphasizes that decisions must be in the best interests of the children.

Decision-making responsibility

The responsibility for making important decisions and getting information about a child’s:

• health care,
• education,
• culture,
• language,
• religion and spirituality, and
• significant extracurricular activities.

Parents can agree to divide or share these responsibilities in whatever way works best for the child. If they can’t agree, the court can make an order.

Parenting time

This is the time each parent spends with the child.

• During parenting time, the parent who the child is with makes day-to-day decisions (like bedtime and meals) and supervises the child. They can also get information from others (like teachers and health care providers) about their child’s well-being.
• Parents can share parenting time equally, or one parent can have the child most of the time. They can arrange parenting time in any way that’s in the best interests of the child.

Parents who aren’t or weren’t married, or any person who stands or intends to stand in the place of a parent, can apply for a parenting order under the Divorce Act. They must first apply for permission to do so, in BC Supreme Court.

Contact

The time that someone who isn’t a married or formerly married parent spends with the child.

• Grandparents, aunts and uncles, step-parents, and other people who might be important to your child can apply to court to get contact. They must first get the court’s permission to apply.
• People with contact don’t have a right to make decisions about a child. Nor can they get information about the child’s well-being.

Parents’ responsibilities and children’s rights

Parents are legally responsible for supporting their children until they’re at least 19, and after they turn 19 if they’re still financially dependent.

• Even if you never lived with your child or your child’s other parent, you still have a legal responsibility to contribute to your child’s support.
• If there’s any dispute or uncertainty about whether someone is a parent, the court can order a parentage test.
• Child support is the child’s legal right.

Adoptive parents

Married couples, couples who live together in a common-law relationship, and single people can apply to adopt a child. You can adopt your spouse’s child from another relationship if the child’s other parent agrees. If the child is 12 or older, they must also agree to being adopted.

If adoptive parents separate, they have the same responsibilities and rights as biological parents to make decisions about their child, parenting time, and child support.

Step-parents

Under the BC Family Law Act, you’re a step-parent if:

• you and the child’s parent are or were married, or lived common-law for at least two years, and
• you lived with the child’s parent and the child during the child’s life.

Under BC family law, a step-parent doesn’t automatically become a child’s guardian. You must apply for guardianship of your step-child. But, even if you’re not a guardian, you might have to pay child support for a step-child after you separate.

As a step-parent, you have to pay child support after separation if:

• you contributed to the child’s support for at least one year; and
• a child support application is made within a year of the last time you contributed to the child’s support.

A step-parent’s responsibility to pay child support comes after the child’s parents’ or other guardians’ responsibility.

When deciding if a step-parent should pay child support, courts look at various factors, including:

• the child’s standard of living when they lived with the step-parent, and
• how long they lived together.

When parents separate, they need to figure out how to co-parent their dependent children (usually those under age 19).

This involves working out:

• how you make decisions about the children,
• where the children are going to live, and
• how much time the children spend with each parent.

It’s a good idea to put these parenting arrangements into a written agreement (under the Family Law Act) or parenting plan (under the Divorce Act).

You can get free legal help if you or the other parent are being investigated for a child protection matter. If a social worker from the ministry or a delegated Aboriginal agency contacts you to ask questions about your family, call Legal Aid BC immediately to see if you qualify for a free lawyer.

Depending on where you live, you may be able to get help from a lawyer and advocate at a Parents Legal Centre. Legal Aid BC provides this service to help parents who are dealing with child protection issues. The service is available any time after the ministry or a delegated Aboriginal agency contacts you.

Call Parents Legal Centre at 1-888-522-2752 (1-888-LABC-PLC) to find out if there’s a location near you and if you qualify for help.

The law in BC says Indigenous cultural ties are very important for Indigenous children. The child protection process recognizes an Indigenous child’s right to their cultural identity and connection to their Indigenous communities when planning for their care. The child protection process is evolving with the BC government’s recognition and support of the rights of Indigenous communities to make laws and provide their own child and family services. 

See An Act respecting First Nations, Inuit, and Métis children, youth, and families for the Best Interests of Indigenous Child provisions.

To find out more about child protection and Indigenous families, see the resources Keeping Aboriginal Kids Safe and Parents’ Rights, Kids’ Rights on the Aboriginal Legal Aid in BC website. 

The Family Law Act and the Divorce Act say that parents and the courts must only consider the best interests of the child when making decisions about children.

The best interests of the child include:

• your child’s health, safety, and emotional well-being;
• your child’s cultural identity, language, and heritage;
• your child’s views and preferences;
• the love and affection between your child and other important people in their life;
• your child’s needs, including the need for stability at their age and stage of development;
• who looked after the child in the past and how well they looked after the child;
• the ability of parents or others who want guardianship, parenting time, parental responsibilities, decision-making responsibility, or contact to care for and meet your child’s needs;
• whether any arrangements that require you and the other parent to communicate and cooperate are appropriate;
• whether there’s any family violence, and if so, the effect on your child’s safety, security, and well-being; and,
• whether there are any court proceedings or orders relevant to the child’s safety, security, or well-being.

Always think about the best interests of your child when making decisions about them. If you can’t agree with the other parent about what’s best for your child, you can get help from a mediator to work out your disagreement outside of court. If you still can’t agree, you can go to court and ask a judge to decide.

Possible parenting arrangements

After you separate, you and the other parent can plan how to continue caring for your child. You can make an agreement about parenting arrangements.

Here are some examples of possible parenting arrangements:

• The child lives with one parent most of the time, and this parent is responsible for making most decisions.
• The child lives with one parent more of the time, and the parents make decisions jointly.
• The child lives with each parent at least 40 percent of the time, and the parents make decisions jointly.
• One or more of the children live with each parent, and the parents divide decisions between them.

Moving with a child

After separation, you might plan to move — with or without your child. A move that has a significant effect on your child’s relationship with a guardian, a person who has parenting time and decision-making responsibilities, or a person with contact, is called relocation.

If there’s a parenting or contact order or agreement in place, check to see if it talks about relocation.

If you want to relocate, you need to take certain steps. What you need to do depends on which law you use.

• Under the Family Law Act, generally, if you’re a child’s guardian and you plan to relocate, with or without your child, you must give notice of your move to any other guardians and any person who has contact with the child. This means you must tell them where you plan to move and when, in writing, at least 60 days before you plan to move.
• Under the Divorce Act, if you have parenting time or decision-making responsibility and plan to relocate, you must give at least 60 days’ written notice to anyone else who has parenting time, decision-making responsibility, or contact under a contact order. The notice must say when and where you plan to move and must also include your contact information. It must also include a proposal for new parenting arrangements or contact if the move happens.

If you have contact with the child, and you’re planning to move, the Divorce Act says that you must notify people who have parenting time or decision-making responsibility of your plan to move. You must give notice in writing, set out where and when you plan to move (as well as your contact information), and provide a plan for new contact arrangements. You must give notice at least 60 days before your planned move.

Under both laws, you can ask the court to excuse you from giving notice of a planned move if doing so would put you at risk of family violence.

Objecting to a relocation

• Under the Family Law Act, only a guardian can object to your plan to move after they get the notice. They can object by filing a court application for an order to stop the move within 30 days of receiving notice of the move.
• Under the Divorce Act, only someone who has parenting time or decision-making responsibility can object to your plan to move. They must object within 30 days of receiving notice of the move, using a special form or filing a court application for an order to stop the move.

If a guardian or a person with parenting time or decision-making responsibility objects to your move, they can ask for an order that says you can’t move. To decide whether you can move, the court looks at a number of factors, including:

• the reasons for your move,
• whether your move is likely to improve your child’s or your quality of life,
• whether you gave proper notice of your plan to move,
• whether you suggested reasonable arrangements to protect the child’s relationship with the person who isn’t moving, and
• whether the move is in the best interests of the child.

A person who only has contact with a child can’t object. Instead, a person with contact can apply anytime for an order to change their contact time.

The Family Law Act and the Divorce Act both say you must try hard to work out your disagreements. To avoid an urgent and difficult court hearing (whether or not you have a parenting agreement or order), try to discuss your move with the other person before you make firm plans. Also, get a lawyer’s advice about how likely it is that a court would allow the move. Use mediation to help sort out new parenting arrangements or a new contact schedule.

See Help to make an agreement for where to find a mediator.

Concerns about parenting time or contact

Conditions in your court order

If you have concerns about the other parent or another person spending time with your child, you can ask a judge to include conditions in your court order to help protect your child. For example, the order could say the other person:

• can’t take your child out of the province,
• can’t use alcohol or drugs immediately before and during visits, and/​or
• can only visit your child when a supervisor (neutral person) is there.

If you’re afraid for your safety or your child’s safety when they spend time with the parent or person with contact, see a lawyer immediately. If you can’t afford a lawyer, you might be able to get legal aid. You might also be able to get legal aid if the other parent has denied your parenting time or contact.

See Help from a lawyer for more about Legal Aid BC.

Denying parenting time or contact

The courts want to ensure children have meaningful relationships with each parent.

To deny parenting time or contact, you must have strong reasons showing that time with the other parent would be emotionally or physically unsafe for the child. Some examples include:

• you’re afraid for your child’s safety because of family violence;
• you believe the other parent was drunk or high when they were to have time with your child;
• over the past year, the other parent often missed their parenting time, or was late and didn’t give you reasonable notice;
• your child is ill, and you have a doctor’s note.

One parent can’t deny the other parenting time or contact because they don’t pay child support or are behind on payments. There are other ways to enforce non-payment of support.

Disputes

If you have a Family Law Act court order or agreement that gives you parenting time or contact and the other parent or guardian won’t let you see your child, try to sort things out with the other person outside of court. This can include getting help from a family justice counsellor or another mediator. If you can’t work things out, you can ask a court to enforce the order or agreement.

If the court finds the other parent or guardian ​“wrongfully” kept you from spending time with your child, the court can make an order that:

• you and the other parent or guardian must attend mediation or another form of family dispute resolution;
• you, the other parent or guardian, or your child must attend counselling;
• you can make up the lost time with your child over a period of time set out in the order;
• the other parent or guardian must pay you back any relevant expenses you incurred when you were denied time with your child;
• the transfer of your child from the other parent or guardian to you must be supervised;
• the other parent or guardian must pay you or your child up to $5,000 for denying you time with your child; or
• the other parent or guardian has to pay a court fine of up to $5,000.

If a person with parenting time or contact repeatedly fails to use their parenting time or contact with the child, the court can also make similar kinds of orders about that.

After they separate, one parent usually has to give the other parent money to help support the children. This is called child support. Parents, guardians, and sometimes step-parents have a legal duty to support their children, even if they don’t see or take care of them. The child support laws are based on the idea that children should continue to benefit from the ability of both parents to support them.

Child support is the child’s legal right, even though it is money paid to their parent or guardian. This means that a parent can’t ​“bargain away” child support. The court usually won’t accept an agreement that says one parent doesn’t have to pay child support in exchange for something else.

The parent who the child lives with most of the time is entitled to get child support from the parent the child doesn’t live with (called the payor). This is to help with the costs of raising the child. If the child spends the same or almost the same amount of time with each parent, the parent with the higher income usually has to pay child support to the other parent.

A parent can’t stop the other parent from having parenting time or contact because they haven’t paid or have fallen behind on child support payments. Child support and time with the child are separate family law issues.

Child support amount

The amount of child support that must be paid in BC is based on the Federal Child Support Guidelines (the guidelines), which are made up of a set of rules and tables. Courts use the guidelines and the tables to set child support.

To calculate the child support amount you can expect in your situation, you can look up the Child Support Tables. Go to the Department of Justice Canada website. Click Family Law and then scroll to choose Child Support. On that page, click the link to ​“Look up child support amounts.”

Support amounts are based on how much gross income the payor earns in a year and how many children you have together. The support amounts are different for each province. Like the courts, you would use the guideline tables for the province where the payor lives and works, even if the children live in another province.

To use the child support tables, you need the payor’s financial information. (If you have a shared or split parenting arrangement, both parents’ incomes are needed to calculate the support.) It’s important that you both honestly share all the up-to-date information you’d need if you went to court. If one of you doesn’t and the other parent finds out that what you provided to them was not true, incomplete, or inaccurate, they could go to court to have the support amount changed.

If you apply for child support in court, the person asked to pay has to provide you with a completed financial statement and attach tax returns and notices of assessment and reassessment for the past three years.

If they’re	they also need to provide
an employee	their most recent statement of earnings
receiving Employment Insurance/​EI	their three most recent benefit statements
receiving social assistance	a statement confirming the amount they receive

If a person who has to provide financial information doesn’t do so, a court might estimate what their income is. This is called imputing income. The payor would have to pay child support based on that imputed income amount.

For Indigenous families

If the payor is a Status Indian who lives and works on reserve and doesn’t have to pay provincial or federal income tax, the courts adjust the Federal Child Support Guidelines income amount upward. The child gets more support because the payor’s income is untaxed. This adjustment is called grossing up income. It’s very important to know for sure whether the payor gets non-taxable income.

For Indigenous families, the courts also look at the financial help a child gets from their Nation for education expenses when they decide how much child support the parent or guardian must pay for the child.

If you have questions about child support, talk to a lawyer. See Help from a lawyer for where to find a lawyer.

Special or extraordinary expenses

The Federal Child Support Guidelines tables contain the basic amounts for child support (for food, shelter, and clothing). Most parents share an amount on top of basic child support for special and extraordinary expenses. These are extra expenses that are:

• necessary, because they’re in the child’s best interests (for example, if your child has a special talent), and
• reasonable, based on the family’s financial situation and whether the cost is affordable

Special expenses include:

• child care expenses;
• the portion of your medical and dental insurance premiums that provides coverage for your child;
• your child’s health care needs if the cost isn’t covered by insurance (for example, orthodontics, counselling, speech therapy, medication, or eye care, such as glasses); and
• post-secondary education expenses.

Extraordinary expenses include:

• extracurricular activities, and
• educational expenses other than post-secondary education (such as private school).

Usually, both parents contribute to the cost of special and extraordinary expenses in proportion to their gross annual incomes.

These expenses can be set out in an agreement or court order.

Undue hardship

If you think you won’t have enough money to support yourself after you pay child support, you can ask to pay a different amount. You can claim you’ll suffer undue hardship because paying the required amount of child support would make your household’s standard of living lower than the recipient’s.

If you’re the payor, you have to prove that the payments would be ​“undue” or exceptional, excessive, or disproportionate. Some examples of situations that can cause undue hardship include having:

• an unusual or excessive amount of debt
• to make support payments for children from another family (for example, from a previous marriage)
• to support a disabled or ill person
• to spend a lot of money to visit the children (for example, airfare to another city)

You can also claim undue hardship if you receive child support payments and you think the amount in the Federal Child Support Guidelines table isn’t enough to support your child.

In either case, you can ask the court to change the child support amount. Talk to a lawyer to find out if the court might consider your situation to be undue hardship.

How long child support lasts

Child support is usually payable for children:

• under age 19, and
• 19 or older if they can’t support themselves because of illness, disability, or some other reason, including going to school full-time.

How to change a child support agreement or order

If you have a child support agreement, you can change it at any time by making a new one if you and the other person both agree.

If the other person doesn’t agree with a change you want to make, you can apply to court to set aside (cancel) all or part of the agreement. The court might:

• replace the unfair provisions with a court order
• set aside your agreement if it’s different from what the court would have ordered under the law.

The Child Support Guidelines and court rules say that parents should exchange financial information every year. The amount of child support to be paid might increase or decrease based on that. If you and the other parent can’t agree, you can try mediation. If you can’t agree, you can go to court to ask for a court order.

If there’s a court order in place, either parent can make a court application to apply to lower or raise child support payments if there’s a change in circumstances, such as:

• a long-term income change for the payor,
• a change to a child’s special or extraordinary expenses, or
• a change in a child’s living arrangements or contact (such as where the child moves to live with the other parent, or divides their time between parents differently).

The court can also change the order if:

• circumstances have changed so much that a court would make a different order now,
• one person didn’t provide all the necessary financial information when the order was made, or
• important new information wasn’t available when the order was made.

The Supreme Court Family Rules , the Provincial Court (Family) Rules , and the Federal Child Support Guidelines all say when a payor and a recipient need to give financial information to each other.

Child support and income tax

Money paid under child support orders made since May 1, 1997, isn’t considered taxable income for the recipient or a tax deduction for the payor. Orders made before May 1, 1997, still have tax consequences.

See the Canada Revenue Agency website for details and search for ​“support payments.”

BC Family Maintenance Agency

Once you have an agreement filed at the court registry or you have an order for child support, you can enroll it with the BC Family Maintenance Agency or BCFMA, (formerly know as the BC Family Maintenance Enforcement Program, or FMEP). The BCFMA is a free BC government program that helps monitor and collect any support owed to you. You don’t have to wait until the payments are late to register. You can register the order or agreement immediately after it’s made. Sometimes it’s easier to have a third party to keep track of payments, and to receive and send them.

See Other free legal services for BCFMA contact information.