Under the federal ''[[Divorce Act]]'', married spouses have ''decision-making responsibilities'' for their children, and the schedule of their time with the children is called ''parenting time''. People who are not married spouses may have ''contact'' with a child.

Decision-making responsibilities means more or less the same thing as parental responsibilities, although the ''Family Law Act'' goes into a lot more detail about the sort of decisions that parental responsibilities includes than the ''Divorce Act'' does. The court will think about agreements that talk about decision-making responsibilities as if the agreement was about parental responsibilities.