5,310
edits
Changes
no edit summary
===Parenting time, contact and child support===
A person's time with a child is entirely different and separate from any duty they might have to pay child support. Child support is not a fee paid to get parenting time or contact, nor is it a fee charged in return for allowing parenting time or contact. Child support is paid by one person to another to help the person receiving support, the ''recipient'', cover the <span class="noglossary">costs</span> associated with raising the child and providing them with the most positive and most enriching childhood as possible. Parenting time or contact, on the other hand, is about a child's right to benefit from spending time with an adult, as long as that time is in the child's best interests.
However, there are two circumstances where the arrangements made for parenting time and contact can have an impact on how child support is calculated: when the parents share their children's time more or less equally; and, when each parent has the primary home of one or more of the children. You can read more about child support in the [[Child Support]] chapter.
Only the ''Family Law Act'' talks about guardianship, because making rules about guardianship is a responsibility of the provinces, not the federal government. The federal ''[[Divorce Act]]'' doesn't — and can't! — talk about guardianship. But the act uses concepts that are a lot like guardianship, when it talks about the rights and responsibilities involved in decision-making responsibility and parenting time.
This section talks about parents who are presumed to be the guardians of a child, how people can apply to be appointed as the guardian of a child, and how people can become a guardian upon the death of a guardian. It also talks about the rights and obligations involved in being a guardian, parental responsibilities and parenting time, which are the rights and obligations guardians hold.
===Being a guardian===
Parents who didn't live together, on the other hand, aren't guardians unless:
*they are parents because of an assisted reproduction agreement signed before the child was conceived (that's the bit about section 30in section 39(3)(a)),
*the parent who the child doesn't usually live with and all of the child's guardians make an agreement that the parent is a guardian, or
*the parent who the child doesn't usually live with "regularly cares for the child."
*ask the court for an order appointing you as a guardian of the child, under section 51.
There's also the chance that the other parent a guardian mightdecide to:
*appoint you as a guardian in their will, under section 53 of the ''Family Law Act'', so that you become a guardian of the child when the other parent appointing guardian dies, or*appoint you as a standby guardian of the child, under section 55, so that you become a guardian of the child when the other parent appointing guardian is diagnosed with a terminal illness or a permanent mental incapacity.
If you are not one of the child's parents, your choices are more limited. You can ask the court for an order appointing you as a guardian of the child, under section 51 of the ''Family Law Act'', or you can be appointed as a guardian in a guardian's will or as a standby an appointing guardian. Of course, if time is important or there's little chance that a guardian is going to name you as a guardian in their will or as a standby guardian, then you'll need to apply to court.
====Becoming a guardian by agreement====
<blockquote><tt>(2) Despite subsection (1), an agreement or order made after separation or when the parents are about to separate may provide that a parent is not the child's guardian.</tt></blockquote>
Sometimes, a guardian wants to remove another person as a guardian of a child. In cases like this, the guardian can ask the court for an order "terminating" a person's guardianship of a child, under section 51 of the ''Family Law Act''. This doesn't happen very often, even if the guardians are involved in high levels of conflict and can never agree on anything. Often, the court will take parenting time, parental responsibilities or both away from a guardian before removing them as a guardian.
===Inability, incapacity or death of a guardian===