Building a Fair Parenting Schedule Around a Relocation

The situation

Bilal and Shira separated when their son, Ari, was five months old. They had never married, and they split the way many new parents do under strain: carefully at first, then less carefully as exhaustion set in. For the first few months they kept things informal. Shira, a police sergeant working rotating shifts, had the baby on her days off. Bilal, a pharmacist, took him on the days Shira worked. Neither parent wrote anything down. It worked well enough because both of them lived in Brantford, ten minutes apart, and could adjust week to week by text message.

That changed when Bilal was offered a promotion that required relocating to a pharmacy network's regional office roughly two hours away. It was the kind of opportunity that does not come twice, and turning it down was not something he seriously considered. He told Shira he intended to accept it and wanted to talk about what the schedule would look like afterward. She did not respond well. She told him that moving away from a five-month-old was not something a court would allow, and that if he left, he should not expect to see his son on weekdays again.

Bilal came to Treadstone Law before signing anything with his new employer, wanting to understand what was realistic before he made a decision he could not easily undo.

The legal problem

Bilal and Shira had never married, which matters for which statute actually governs them. The Divorce Act only applies once a divorce proceeding is underway between married spouses; for unmarried parents like Bilal and Shira, parenting arrangements are governed instead by Ontario's Children's Law Reform Act. The two statutes were harmonized in 2021 and now use largely parallel language, so the substance is similar either way, but it was the Children's Law Reform Act, not the Divorce Act, that actually applied to their situation. Under it, decisions about a child's parenting arrangements are governed by the best interests of the child — not by which parent's preferences are more convenient, and not by who moved first. Courts weigh factors including the child's relationships with each parent, each parent's ability to care for the child, and the child's need for stability. There is no fixed rule that a parent who relocates automatically loses time with an infant, but there is also no rule that guarantees the relocating parent keeps the same schedule they had before.

The harder problem was the baby's age. Family law professionals generally caution against long stretches away from either parent for infants and very young children, because babies build attachment through frequent, predictable contact rather than through occasional long visits. A schedule that might suit a ten-year-old — alternating weeks, or every second weekend — can actually work against a one-year-old's need for consistency. That meant the honest answer for Bilal was not 'move and then figure out weekends.' It was that any workable plan would need to start small and expand as the child grew, regardless of the distance involved.

There was also a practical wrinkle: neither parent had signed anything defining decision-making authority — the right to make significant decisions about a child's health care, education, religion, and general welfare — or how disputes would be resolved if they disagreed. Without an agreement or a court order, either parent could unilaterally change the arrangement at any time, which is exactly what nearly happened next.

The notice requirement itself is not just good practice; it is written into the Children's Law Reform Act, using language that mirrors the equivalent provision in the Divorce Act for married parents. A parent who intends to relocate a child must give the other parent with parenting time or contact at least 60 days' written notice before the proposed move, using a form that sets out the new address, the moving date, and a proposed revised parenting schedule. The other parent then has 30 days from receiving that notice to object. If no objection is filed within those 30 days and no existing court order stands in the way of the move, the relocating parent can generally proceed on the terms proposed; if an objection is filed, the matter goes before a judge, who decides based on the best interests of the child rather than on either parent's convenience. Missing that 60-day runway does not automatically bar a parent from moving, but it strips away the orderly process the Act is built around, and it is the surest way to turn a legitimate career move into a contested motion.

What we did

1. Advised against a unilateral move-and-negotiate approach. Bilal's first instinct was to accept the job, move, and work out a schedule afterward. We explained that relocating before any agreement was in place — even for a legitimate reason like career advancement — could be used against him if the matter ever reached court, since it could look like he had presented Shira with a fait accompli rather than genuinely consulting her.
2. Recommended written notice before any final decision. The Children's Law Reform Act requires a relocating parent with parenting time to give the other parent at least 60 days' written notice of an intended move, including the proposed date, the new address, and a proposed revised schedule, except in limited circumstances such as a risk of family violence. We helped Bilal prepare that notice properly, well ahead of any lease signing, so the process started on solid footing rather than as damage control.
3. Proposed a graduated schedule rather than a fixed split. Rather than negotiating a single arrangement meant to last years, we drafted a plan that started with more frequent, shorter blocks of parenting time near Brantford during a transition period, then shifted toward longer blocks — extended weekends and school breaks once the child was older — as the child aged and could tolerate longer separations from each parent. This reflected the developmental reality rather than either parent's preference.
4. Built in a mid-point exchange arrangement. Because the two-hour distance made every exchange a half-day commitment, we negotiated a rotating responsibility for the drive, with a fixed midpoint meeting location roughly equidistant from both homes, and cost-sharing for the fuel and any highway tolls. Details like these sound minor on paper, but they are exactly the kind of thing that causes recurring day-to-day friction if left to be worked out informally exchange by exchange, especially once emotions were already running high after the earlier three-week notice dispute.
5. Addressed decision-making separately from time. We negotiated joint decision-making on major issues — health care, education, and religion — while giving each parent day-to-day authority during their own parenting time, such as bedtime routines, meals, and minor scheduling calls. This avoided a dispute mechanism being needed for every small choice, while preserving Shira's voice in decisions that mattered, and it reduced the number of issues either parent could weaponize during a disagreement to only the ones that were genuinely significant.
6. Documented everything in a signed parenting agreement. Once terms were settled, we prepared a comprehensive written agreement rather than relying on the informal understanding that had worked before the move fell apart. A signed agreement gives both parents something enforceable through the courts if one side later stops complying, and something concrete to point back to when memories of what was agreed diverge later, which after a bruising negotiation like this one, they usually do.

The outcome

The negotiation did not go smoothly the first time. Bilal, eager to resolve things quickly, had already signed a lease near his new job and given Shira only three weeks' notice before he intended to move — well short of the 60 days the Divorce Act calls for, and well short of what would have been reasonable given the distance and the child's age. Shira, understandably alarmed, retained her own lawyer and the two sides spent nearly four months in increasingly adversarial negotiation before reaching the graduated schedule described above. That delay had real costs: Bilal ended up commuting back to Brantford most weekends during his first months at the new job rather than settling into his new role, and legal costs on both sides were higher than they would have been with earlier planning.

The schedule the parties eventually signed gave Shira the majority of parenting time during the child's first eighteen months, with Bilal traveling to Brantford for two mid-week overnight visits and one full weekend per month, plus video calls several times a week. The agreement specified that the schedule would be revisited when the child turned two, with an already-agreed template for longer blocks of summer and holiday time once he started school. Both parents kept joint decision-making authority on major issues.

Bilal got to keep the job and the relationship with his son, but not on the timeline or with the ease he had hoped for. The three weeks of notice he gave before signing his lease effectively cost him months of avoidable conflict and a schedule weighted more heavily toward Shira in the early period than it likely would have been had he approached the move differently from the outset. The lesson for Bilal was not that relocating was wrong — it was that the sequence mattered as much as the substance.

What you can learn from this