Markham Child Custody Lawyer. Decision-Making Responsibility & Parenting Time

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If you are searching for a Markham child custody lawyer, start with the vocabulary: since 2021, Ontario courts no longer grant custody or access. They allocate decision-making responsibility, parenting time and contact through parenting orders, under the Divorce Act for divorcing spouses and under Ontario's Children's Law Reform Act for everyone else, and they decide every one of those questions on a single test: the best interests of the child. Kazandji Law represents Markham parents and grandparents at the Newmarket Unified Family Court, 50 Eagle St. W., where every York Region parenting case is heard, and brings what few family firms offer, criminal defence capability for files where domestic charges or bail conditions collide with the parenting schedule.

By Fadi Matthew Kazandji, Founding Partner, Kazandji Law. Updated July 2026.

Custody Has a New Name: The 2021 Vocabulary

The Divorce Act's custody and access provisions were repealed by the 2019 amendments that came into force in 2021, and custody (now decision-making responsibility) survives only as a search term. What courts actually order today is set out in a parenting order under s. 16.1, and Ontario matched the language for unmarried parents when the Moving Ontario Family Law Forward Act, 2020 (S.O. 2020, c. 25) harmonized the Children's Law Reform Act with the federal scheme. Married or not, Markham parents now litigate the same concepts in the same Newmarket courtroom.

What people say	What the court orders	Where it lives
Custody	Decision-making responsibility: significant decisions about health, education, culture, language, religion and spirituality, and significant extracurricular activities	Divorce Act ss. 16.1, 16.3; CLRA for unmarried parents
Access (a parent's time)	Parenting time under a schedule in the parenting order	Divorce Act ss. 16.1 to 16.2
Access (grandparents and others)	A contact order, with the court's leave	Divorce Act s. 16.5
Custody order	Parenting order allocating decision-making and time	Divorce Act s. 16.1; CLRA parenting orders

The vocabulary is not cosmetic. Orders and agreements drafted in the old language still get interpreted by courts, but new documents drafted in old terms invite disputes about what was actually allocated. Precision at the drafting stage, which decisions, whose time, what information rights, is cheap insurance against a motion two years later. For the province-wide framework, see our Ontario child custody practice page.

Never Married? The CLRA Route to the Same Courtroom

The Divorce Act only governs spouses inside a divorce. For unmarried Markham parents, and for separated parents who are not divorcing, the governing statute is Ontario's Children's Law Reform Act. Since the Moving Ontario Family Law Forward Act, 2020 (S.O. 2020, c. 25) took effect, the CLRA speaks the same language as the federal Act: decision-making responsibility, parenting time and contact, allocated through parenting orders on a best-interests analysis. The reform was deliberate, two parents should not face different vocabularies because one couple married and the other did not.

Three practical points follow. First, the forum is identical: CLRA parenting cases for Markham families are heard at the same Newmarket Unified Family Court as Divorce Act cases, with the same conferences, mediation services and Family Law Information Centre. Second, the paperwork is parallel, parenting claims travel with the Form 35.1 parenting affidavit either way. Third, the statutes still differ in points of detail, including who needs leave and how orders are enforced, so the safe course is statute-specific advice rather than assumptions borrowed from the federal template.

The Only Test: Best Interests of the Child

Section 16(1) of the Divorce Act directs the court to take into account only the best interests of the child, and s. 16(2) names the primary consideration: the child's physical, emotional and psychological safety, security and well-being. Everything else, including each parent's sense of fairness, is secondary. Section 16(3) then lists the factors, which we plead and prove factor by factor:

Factor	What the court looks at
(a) Needs and stage	The child's needs given age and stage of development, including the need for stability
(b) Relationships	The child's relationship with each parent, siblings, grandparents and other important people
(c) Support for the other parent	Each spouse's willingness to support the child's relationship with the other spouse
(d) History of care	Who actually raised the child, day by day
(e) The child's views	Views and preferences, given due weight by age and maturity, unless they cannot be ascertained
(f) Culture and heritage	Cultural, linguistic, religious and spiritual upbringing and heritage, including Indigenous heritage
(g) Plans	Each person's plans for the child's care
(h) Capacity	The ability and willingness of each person to care for and meet the needs of the child
(i) Cooperation	The ability and willingness to communicate and cooperate on matters affecting the child
(j) Family violence	Any family violence and its impact, on the ability and willingness of the person who engaged in it to care for the child, and on the appropriateness of orders that require cooperation
(k) Other proceedings	Any civil or criminal proceeding, order, condition or measure relevant to the safety, security and well-being of the child

Two guardrails complete the test. Past conduct is off the table unless relevant to parenting (s. 16(5)). And s. 16(6) states a principle, not a presumption: the child should have as much time with each spouse as is consistent with the child's best interests, that is not a 50/50 default, and no Ontario statute creates one.

The Evidence That Wins Best-Interests Cases

Section 16(3) reads like an abstraction until it is translated into records. When we build a Markham parenting case, each factor becomes an evidence assignment:

• History of care (d). School portal logins and teacher emails, medical appointment records, activity registrations, who signed the forms, who drove, who stayed home on sick days;
• Plans and capacity (g), (h). A concrete proposal, housing, school, child care, work schedule, back-up care, persuades; adjectives about the other parent do not;
• Cooperation (c), (i). Your own messages are exhibits. Child-focused, civil communication supports a claim to shared decision-making; sniping undermines it in your own handwriting;
• Stability (a). The child's existing routine, documented week by week, one reason interim arrangements carry so much practical weight;
• Safety (j), (k). Occurrence numbers, orders and conditions, stated accurately, exaggeration damages credibility as surely as omission.

The affidavit gets built around the factors the judge must weigh, not around the relationship's grievances. That is the difference between evidence and venting, and judges can tell.

Family Violence Changes the Analysis. With or Without Charges

The Divorce Act defines family violence to include conduct whether or not it constitutes a criminal offence, expressly capturing patterns of coercive and controlling behaviour and a child's direct or indirect exposure to the conduct. Where it is raised, s. 16(4) gives the court a dedicated checklist: the nature, seriousness and frequency of the violence and when it occurred; whether there is a pattern of coercive and controlling behaviour; whether it was directed at the child or the child was exposed to it; the harm or risk of harm; whether it compromises safety; whether it causes fear; the steps taken to prevent further violence; and anything else relevant.

Factor (k) then pulls the criminal docket into the family courtroom: any criminal proceeding, order, condition or measure relevant to the child's safety must be considered, and s. 7.8 places a positive duty on the court to check for related civil protection, child protection and criminal proceedings so the orders can be coordinated. In practice, a domestic charge in York Region can reshape a parenting case overnight, bail conditions can restrict contact and residence immediately, before any family judge has seen the file.

Building the Parenting Order: Who Decides, Who Cares, Who Is Informed

A parenting order can be sought by each spouse, or, with the court's leave, by a non-spouse who stands in the place of a parent. Section 16.3 lets the court allocate decision-making responsibility to one parent, to both, or subject by subject, health to one, education shared, religion to the other, and s. 16.1 lets the order carry the machinery: schedules, means of communication, dispute-resolution directions, authorizations or prohibitions on relocation, supervision requirements and geographic limits.

Two quieter provisions decide daily life. Under s. 16.2(2), the parent exercising parenting time has exclusive authority over day-to-day decisions while the child is with them, unless the court orders otherwise, bedtimes and homework are not committee business. And under s. 16.4, any person with parenting time or decision-making responsibility may request information about the child's health, education and well-being from the other parent or third parties, subject to a contrary order, the provision that keeps schools and doctors from becoming gatekeepers between parents.

Money runs on separate rails: the parenting schedule feeds the 40% threshold and other support mechanics, but the dollars are set under the Guidelines, see our Markham child support page for that machinery.

Parenting Plans Courts Adopt, and the Duties That Frame Them

Most Markham parenting cases end in an agreed plan, not a trial, and the Divorce Act is built to encourage exactly that. Under s. 16.6, if the parties agree on a parenting plan, the court shall include it in the parenting order unless it would be contrary to the child's best interests, in which case the court may modify it. The Act also imposes personal duties on every litigant: exercise your rights consistently with the child's best interests (s. 7.1), protect the child from conflict arising from the proceeding (s. 7.2), try family dispute resolution where appropriate (s. 7.3), give complete, accurate and up-to-date information (s. 7.4), comply with orders until they are changed (s. 7.5), and certify in filed documents that you know these duties (s. 7.6).

The Newmarket court backs this with structure. Every party attends the Mandatory Information Program within 45 days of the case starting, separate sessions for the parties, completed before the first appearance or case conference, with a two-hour session where children are involved. Court-connected mediation is free on-site on court dates and available off-site on a sliding scale, with mediators trained to screen for intimate partner violence; case and settlement conferences, and judicially assisted dispute resolution, give settlement several structured chances before anyone sees a trial.

Grandparents & Non-Parents: Contact Orders

Grandparents and other important adults do not need to stand on the sidelines. A non-spouse may apply, with the court's leave, for a contact order under s. 16.5, and the analysis stays anchored in the child's best interests, including whether the contact could instead take place during a parent's parenting time, which is the first question the statute directs the court to ask. A person who stands in the place of a parent, a step-parent, most commonly, may go further and seek a parenting order itself, again with leave. Ontario's CLRA provides parallel routes for families outside the Divorce Act; the mechanics differ in detail, so unmarried families should get specific advice rather than assume the federal template.

The Child's Own Voice: The Office of the Children's Lawyer

A child's views and preferences are a statutory best-interests factor (s. 16(3)(e)), but children do not testify in Ontario family courtrooms as a matter of course. The bridge is the Office of the Children's Lawyer (OCL): an independent law office within the Ministry of the Attorney General that acts for children under 18 through staff and panel lawyers and clinicians, most of them social workers. The OCL enters a parenting case on a court order or request, it then decides whether to accept the file and informs the parties and the judge in writing. It cannot be privately retained, it does not decide the child's best interests, and it does not enforce anything: it gives the child a voice.

	Voice of the Child Report	Children's Lawyer Report
What it is	A short report of the child's own statements on issues the court identifies, no recommendations	A full clinical investigation ending in a report with recommendations
Who is typically involved	The child, usually over age 7, in two interviews on separate days; statements are reviewed with the child	The child and both parties, with observation visits and collateral sources such as teachers and doctors
Timeline	Report to the court and parties within 30 days of clinician assignment; intake forms are due within one business day of the endorsement	Investigation takes approximately 90 to 120 days from clinician contact
What happens after	The judge reads the child's words alongside the other evidence	The report becomes evidence; the clinician can be cross-examined, and a party has 30 days after receiving it to serve and file a dispute statement under r. 21 of the Family Law Rules

One warning applies to both: nothing in the OCL's clinical process is confidential. What a parent or child says can appear in the report, and statements disclosing abuse go to the local children's aid society. Prepare for OCL involvement the way you would prepare for court, because it is court.

Supervised Parenting Time & Safe Exchanges in York Region

Where safety, substance use or a long absence from the child's life is in issue, the court can order that parenting time, or just the pick-up and drop-off, happen under supervision, as a term of the parenting order. Ontario's Supervised Access Program provides centres where visits and exchanges take place under the supervision of trained staff and volunteers, with on-site and virtual service options and observation notes that can later matter in court.

For Markham families, the York Region program operates through sites in Aurora and Richmond Hill, coordinated by Social Enterprise for Canada from 17705 Leslie St., Unit 11, Newmarket, intake line 1-844-373-4515. Supervision is often a bridge, not a destination: build the review mechanism into the order so the arrangement can evolve as trust is rebuilt.

Moving With the Kids: The Relocation Regime

Since 2021 the Divorce Act contains a complete code for moves (ss. 16.7 to 16.96). Any change of residence requires notice to everyone with parenting time, decision-making responsibility or contact. A relocation, a move likely to have a significant impact on the child's relationships, triggers the full regime:

• 60 days' written notice in the prescribed form, setting out the proposed move;
• a 30-day objection window for a parent who opposes the move;
• additional best-interests factors under s. 16.92, including the reasons for the move and its impact on the child, and a statutory prohibition on the double-bind question: a relocating parent cannot be asked whether they would move without the child (s. 16.92(2));
• burden rules under s. 16.93 that follow the existing arrangement: where the parents have substantially equal time, the relocating parent must show the move is in the child's best interests; where the child spends the vast majority of time with the relocating parent, the objecting parent must show it is not;
• an interim carve-out (s. 16.94) and power to apportion travel costs between the parents (s. 16.95);
• a family-violence exception, the court can waive or modify notice requirements where violence is a risk.

A proposed relocation is also a deemed change of circumstances for varying the parenting order (s. 17(5.2)), so these cases frequently reopen the whole schedule. They are evidence-heavy and deadline-driven: the 30-day objection window is not forgiving, and silence has consequences. If a relocation notice lands in your mailbox, treat it like a limitation period.

Urgent Motions & Interim Stability

Temporary orders decide who the child lives with while the case runs, and they matter enormously, because interim arrangements built around the child's existing routine tend to shape the final landscape (stability is itself a statutory factor, s. 16(3)(a)). The procedural rule cuts the other way: in most cases a party must attend at least one case conference before bringing a motion for a temporary order.

The exceptions are narrow: urgency, where you or your child's safety is at immediate risk, and hardship, where support is needed for basic living conditions. A judge who finds the early motion was unnecessary can order costs against the moving party, so the urgency call is a judgment call with a price tag. What this means in practice for Markham parents: do not manufacture urgency, but do not sit on genuine safety issues either, document, move quickly, and put the evidence in admissible form the first time.

From First Filing to Final Order: How a Markham Parenting Case Runs

Whether the claim proceeds under the Divorce Act or the CLRA, the Newmarket sequence is broadly the same:

1. Application with the Form 35.1 parenting affidavit, every parenting claim files it, setting out the proposed plan and the child's circumstances;
2. Mandatory Information Program within 45 days of the case starting, separate sessions for the parties, completed before the first appearance or case conference;
3. Case conference, under the conference-first rule this is normally the gateway to any motion, and free on-site mediation is available on court dates;
4. Temporary orders where needed, urgency and hardship are the narrow exceptions that let a motion jump ahead of the first conference;
5. Settlement conference, where many of the surviving disputes resolve, with judicial input on the likely outcome;
6. Trial, for the minority of cases that cannot settle, with the best-interests factors argued on the evidence built from day one.

At every stage the file can convert to consent: an agreed parenting plan must be incorporated into the order unless it is contrary to the child's best interests (s. 16.6). We treat each conference as a drafting opportunity, not a formality, the order that ends the case is usually written in one of them.

Changing & Enforcing Parenting Orders

Parenting orders are never final in the way property orders are. Under s. 17(5), the court may vary a parenting order where there has been a change in the circumstances of the child, and a proposed relocation is deemed to be one. The flip side is s. 7.5: until an order is changed, every party must comply with it. Where compliance breaks down, denied parenting time, unilateral schedule changes, the remedies run through the family court under the CLRA and the Family Law Rules, from make-up time through contempt in serious cases, and the record you kept usually decides the motion.

One boundary is absolute: the Family Responsibility Office enforces support, not parenting time. FRO does not get involved in decision-making or parenting-time issues, and no parenting dispute belongs on that channel, parenting enforcement is court work.

What to Bring to a First Parenting Consultation

Parenting advice is only as good as the picture you give the lawyer. For a first meeting about decision-making responsibility or parenting time, the useful file looks like this:

• Any existing court orders, separation agreements or parenting plans, including bail conditions, peace bonds or protection orders touching contact;
• The child's current weekly routine: school, child care, activities, health appointments and who covers each;
• A sample of recent communications with the other parent, the tone matters as much as the content;
• Your proposed plan: where the child would live, the schedule you seek, and how significant decisions would be made;
• Any children's aid society involvement, OCL correspondence or relocation notice, with dates;
• The names of the other important people in the child's life, siblings, grandparents, new partners.

With that file, a consultation produces strategy instead of generalities: which s. 16(3) factors are strong, which need building, and whether the next step is a letter, a mediation intake or an application at Newmarket.

Parenting Cases at Newmarket's Unified Family Court

There is no family courthouse in Markham. Every York Region parenting case, for married and unmarried parents alike, is heard at the Newmarket Family Court Branch of the Superior Court of Justice, 50 Eagle St. W.: a Unified Family Court where parenting, support, property and divorce travel together in one file before one bench. Family court office: 905-853-4809.

• Form 35.1 parenting affidavit accompanies every parenting claim, setting out the plan for the child;
• Mandatory Information Program within 45 days, before the first appearance or case conference;
• FLIC, the Family Law Information Centre, offers free information, referral coordinators and Legal Aid duty counsel;
• Free on-site mediation on court dates, sliding-scale off-site;
• Online filing for most family documents.

If the parenting dispute travels inside a divorce, the whole matter stays at Newmarket, see our Markham divorce lawyer page for that process, and our Markham family lawyer hub for the complete local practice.

Why Kazandji Law for Markham Parenting Cases

• Best-interests advocacy, factor by factor. We build parenting cases on the s. 16(3) checklist, care history, plans, cooperation, the child's world, not on grievances.
• Criminal and family under one roof. When charges, bail conditions or protection orders touch the parenting file, one team coordinates both courtrooms instead of two firms colliding.
• Four GTA offices. Toronto headquarters at 180 John St., Unit 320; a Thornhill office at 7191 Yonge St., Suite 310, minutes from Markham and serving all of York Region; plus North York and Oakville.
• Free, direct consultations. Review our case successes, then call 647-588-3234.

Markham Child Custody FAQ

This page is general legal information about parenting cases in Ontario for Markham and York Region families, it is not legal advice, and reading it does not create a solicitor-client relationship. Statutes, court programs and government services change; section references and program details reflect sources reviewed in July 2026. For advice on your own situation, speak with a family lawyer. Kazandji Law, 180 John St., Unit 320, Toronto, free consultations: 647-588-3234.