Families Change Guide to Separation & Divorce

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Custody and Access

When your parents live together, they are both responsible for taking care of you. When your parents stop living together, this might change.

For example:

  • One parent might have sole custody. This means you live with one parent who takes care of you every day.
  • Or both parents might have custody. This is called joint custody. You might live part of the time with one parent, and part of the time with the other, or live with one parent — but both parents help make decisions about things in your life.

Your parents might be able to agree on custody and access themselves. But if they can't agree, even with the help of a mediator, they can go to court and have a judge decide.

If this happens, the judge who is making the decisions will consider things like:

  • What will give you the fewest changes to deal with?
  • Are both of your parents healthy and responsible?
  • What are your parents' plans for themselves and for you?
  • How close do you feel to each of your parents?
  • Do family and friends live near each of your parents?
  • What is your opinion? (The older you are, the more likely the judge will take your opinion into account.)

This is called the “best interests of the child test”.

If one parent has custody, the other parent usually has access, which means that you visit them. There are lots of different ways to arrange how you spend time with the parent who has access. Visits might be for a few hours every week, or for weekends or a few days every two weeks or month. If the parent with access lives far away, access can also include keeping in touch in other ways, like phone calls, e-mails, and letters.

Access arrangements may be very specific — actually spelling out the specific hours and days for visits — or very general and flexible.

Q & A

Q:
Who decides who I will live with?
A:

Ideally, your parents will make the decisions together about who you will live with and how that will work. Your opinion should be taken into account.

If they can't decide themselves, they might go to a mediator for help in reaching an agreement. Or they might have to go to court and have a judge make the decisions for them.

Q:
What is the difference between separation and divorce?
A:

When two people have been living together and they decide not to live together anymore, they are separated. However, when married people separate, their marriage has not yet ended. They have to get a divorce to legally end a marriage. Common-law couples don't have to get a divorce, because there is no marriage to end.

Q:
My parents never married. Do they have to go through the same process that married parents do when they split up?
A:

Common-law parents — parents who chose to live together without getting married — don't have to get a divorce, because there is no marriage to end. But they do need to decide what will happen to their children and how they will divide their property.