Parents have equal rights to parenting time and decision-making responsibility when they separate or divorce. This statement applies equally to opposite sex and same-sex couples.
Contact a Toronto same-sex parenting time lawyer if you need help establishing a parenting plan with your former partner. The family lawyers at our firm can review your situation, help you negotiate a parenting agreement, and formalize it with a court-issued parenting order, when necessary.
When parents separate, many negotiate a plan to manage parenting time and decision-making responsibility for their children. These agreements can be highly specific documents included in a separation agreement, or loose, informal, interim plans that guide the relationship until the couple has settled into separate lives. A Toronto family lawyer can help an LGBTQ couple negotiate an acceptable parenting agreement.
Negotiated agreements are beneficial for several reasons. Importantly, the partners retain control and can develop an arrangement that is practical given their schedules and lifestyle. Negotiating an agreement is usually quicker and less expensive than taking a parenting time dispute to the courts.
Written parenting agreements are enforceable under contract law, if they are signed by both parties and witnessed. The couple can register their agreement with the court, or jointly request a parenting order. If they choose a parenting order, a court will review the document to ensure it supports the children’s best interests, and if so, issue it as an enforceable court order.
Provincial and federal law requires judges to base parenting time decisions on the children’s best interests. There is no presumption that parents should have equal parenting time, but each parent should have as much time as is consistent with the children’s best interests The gender and sexual orientation of the parents is legally irrelevant.
When considering a child’s best interests, the court can consider various factors. However, the bedrock principle is that the court must make parenting time decisions that further a child’s mental, physical, and psychological security and well-being.
A Toronto lawyer can explain how a judge might evaluate the children’s best interests in a specific same-sex parenting case. It may be beneficial to request an assessment of each parent’s home to help a judge make the best interests determination.
Biological and adoptive parents have full parental rights and can seek parenting time. Same-sex parents who use assisted reproductive technology to have a child are recognized as legal parents under Ontario’s All Families Are Equal Act.
Issues sometimes occur in same-sex families when one partner does not have a biological or legal relationship to the child. For example, if one partner has a biological or adopted child and the child’s co-parent is still alive, the parent’s same-sex partner cannot adopt the child. However, they may develop a parental relationship that is as meaningful and important as the child’s relationship with their legal parents.
The Children’s Law Reform Act s.21(3) permits people in this position to ask the court to issue a contact order. A contact order ensures the continuation of the relationship between a person who has played a parental role in the child’s life but has no biological or legal relationship with them. A same-sex parenting time lawyer in Toronto can assist you if you seek to maintain a parent-like relationship through a contact order.
The law strives to treat all families equally. When same-sex parents separate, the same standards are applied to them as to opposite sex couples when determining parenting time.
A Toronto same-sex parenting time lawyer at our firm can guide you through the process. Reach out anytime to get started.
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