Unmarried Parents Setting Up a Parenting Schedule in Ontario

Getting married is not what makes someone a parent, and separating without ever marrying doesn't change your legal responsibilities to your child, either. But if you and your child's other parent were never married — or never lived together long enough to be treated as spouses — it's worth understanding exactly which law governs your situation, because it isn't the Divorce Act.

In Ontario, parenting arrangements for unmarried parents fall under Ontario's own Children's Law Reform Act, not the federal Divorce Act that governs divorcing spouses. The two frameworks use the same modern language and the same underlying test, but knowing which one applies — and which process fits your situation — helps you set up a schedule that will actually hold up.

The Law That Applies When You Were Never Married

The Children's Law Reform Act governs decision-making responsibility, parenting time, and contact for children whose parents are not going through a divorce — which covers never-married parents, along with parents who lived together but never married. It also addresses legal parentage itself.

Since March 1, 2021, both the Divorce Act and the Children's Law Reform Act use the terms decision-making responsibility, parenting time, and contact in place of the older terms "custody" and "access." If you come across those older terms in older material, know that they've been replaced — the underlying concepts, who decides what for a child and who the child spends time with, are largely the same.

Two Paths to a Parenting Schedule

You generally have two routes to a workable, enforceable schedule:

1. A written parenting agreement. You and the other parent negotiate the terms — decision-making responsibility, a parenting time schedule, holidays, communication — and put them in writing. This is faster and less costly when both parents can cooperate, though it typically isn't enforced by the court in the same direct way as an order unless it's later filed with the court.
2. A court order. Either parent applies to the appropriate court, and a judge decides — or approves an agreed proposal — based on the child's best interests. This route is available whether or not you can agree, and it carries the full weight of a court order from the start.

Many parents start with the first option and move to the second only if disagreements arise, or if they want the added enforceability a filed order provides.

What Decision-Making Responsibility and Parenting Time Actually Cover

These two terms don't mean the same thing, and mixing them up causes confusion in a lot of parenting plans:

• Decision-making responsibility is the authority to make significant decisions for the child — things like health care, education, religion or culture, and significant extracurricular activities. It can be held by one parent or shared between both.
• Parenting time is the time the child is actually in a parent's care. During that time, that parent handles day-to-day decisions, including anything urgent, without needing to consult the other parent.

A schedule needs to address both — not just where the child sleeps on which nights, but who has the authority to make the bigger calls.

What a Court Considers If You Can't Agree

If your case ends up before a judge, the only test that applies is the best-interests-of-the-child test. It gives the greatest weight to the child's physical, psychological, and emotional safety, security, and well-being, and it considers a broad, non-exhaustive range of factors relevant to that specific child — there's no rigid formula that automatically favours one parent over the other. Family violence, where it exists, is an explicit factor the court must weigh, not an afterthought.

Formalizing Support Alongside a Parenting Schedule

Many unmarried parents deal with a parenting schedule and child support at the same time. If support becomes part of a court order — or part of an agreement that's later filed with the court — it can be enforced through Ontario's Family Responsibility Office, which handles collection so parents don't have to chase payments themselves. Support and parenting time are treated as legally separate issues: a parent can't lawfully withhold parenting time because support isn't being paid, and can't lawfully withhold support because parenting time isn't happening.

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