Protection Orders and Contact With Children in British Columbia

If you have a parenting order or agreement and now need a protection order, you may wonder what happens to the children's time with the other parent. Or you may be the parent named in a protection order and unsure how to keep seeing your children lawfully.

This article explains how the two kinds of orders fit together in British Columbia, and what the law says about safety at handovers. Every family is different, so treat it as a starting point.

This article covers the law of British Columbia.

A protection order and a parenting order are different things

A protection order under Part 9 of the Family Law Act is aimed at preventing family violence. A court may make one against a family member if it determines that family violence is likely to occur and the other family member is an at-risk family member. Dating partners, co-workers or strangers who are not a family member under the Act cannot get a Family Law Act protection order against that person. Its terms can restrain contact and communication, restrict attendance at specified places, and include other terms the court considers necessary.

No other family proceeding is required first. You do not need to have a parenting case under way to ask for protection.

When the two orders conflict

For these purposes, a protection order includes Part 9 orders, Criminal Code no-contact orders and similar out-of-province orders. If a protection order conflicts with another order under the Act, that other order is suspended to the extent of the conflict, until it is varied or the protection order ends.

So a parenting order that says exchanges happen at a certain place may stop applying to the extent a protection order bars you from that place. It does not mean parenting time is cancelled as a whole. How to sort out the arrangements depends on your situation, so it is worth confirming with a lawyer rather than guessing.

What the court weighs about the children

When the at-risk family member is a child, the court must also consider whether the child may be exposed to family violence without an order, and whether an order should also be made about the child. A child's direct or indirect exposure to family violence is itself family violence.

In parenting decisions, parties and the court consider only the best interests of the child, and the impact of family violence on the child's safety, security or well-being is a required factor, whether or not the violence was directed at the child. An agreement or order is not in the child's best interests unless it protects, to the greatest extent possible, the child's physical, psychological and emotional safety.

When assessing family violence, the court looks at its seriousness and recency, how often it happened, whether emotional abuse forms a pattern of coercive control, whether the child was exposed to it, the harm to the child, and steps taken to prevent more violence. No parenting arrangement is presumed to be in the child's best interests, including equal parenting time.

Options for safer handovers

• The court may require parenting time to be supervised by a named person.
• A protection order can include terms about contact, communication and places, which can be shaped around exchanges.
• If someone is only restricted from a home, the Provincial Court can make a Part 9 order restricting access to a residence to protect a family member's safety.
• A separate communication order under section 225 is available unless a Part 9 order would be more appropriate.

Practical arrangements such as a trusted third party doing handovers, or exchanging at a public place, are worth raising, but they should be written into an order or agreement so everyone knows what is allowed. Whether a particular arrangement suits your family depends on the facts.

What to do next

• Get copies of your protection order and any parenting order or agreement.
• List where conflicts arise: exchange locations, phone or text contact, school events.
• Do not change handover arrangements informally if the protection order restricts contact.
• Gather any documents or messages that relate to safety and the children, so you can go over them with a lawyer. How they matter depends on your situation.
• Ask a lawyer how to bring the issue to the Supreme Court or Provincial Court, both of which can hear Family Law Act matters.

Frequently asked questions