42
edits
Changes
no edit summary
This section talks about custody and access. It discusses the factors that govern awards of custody and access and the types of orders about custody and access that can be made.
Arrangements for a child's care can also be made under the provincial ''Family Law Act'', which applies to both married and un-married spouses.
==Introduction==
The federal ''[[Divorce Act]]'' talks about the care of children in terms of custody and access. Custody is the right to have the child with you and the right to make parenting decisions about the child, such as 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. Access is the schedule of the child's time between spouses.
Custody can be held by more one or both spouses; this . An arrangement where both spouses share custody is called ''joint custody''. Having joint custody doesn't mean the child's time is equally split between the spouses' homes, but it does mean that they are both assumed to be good parents and that both <span class="noglossary">spouses will</span> participate in making parenting decisions. An arrangement where only one spouse has custody is called "sole custody".
Access generally refers to the schedule of the spouse with the least amount of child's time with the childbetween spouses. There are no fixed rules about what access should look like. The factors that the court usually thinks about when making decisions about access include:
*the distance between the spouses' homes,