Rebuilding a Parenting Schedule When One Parent Moves Cities

The situation

Ifrah and James had never married. They had a son together, now six, and after their relationship ended when he was a toddler, the two of them had worked out a routine on their own: James picked him up after work most weekdays, had him every second weekend, and the arrangement had never needed a lawyer or a court order. It was informal, unwritten, and until this year, it worked.

That changed when James, a pharmacist, accepted a position at a hospital pharmacy in a city roughly two and a half hours from Etobicoke. It was a genuine career step up, with better pay and a path toward a management role he had been chasing for years. He gave Ifrah several weeks' notice before the move. She was not opposed to him taking the job. What she needed was a real answer to the question neither of them had ever had to face: what happens to their son's week when his father lives two and a half hours away.

Ifrah's sister Hodan, who had helped with school pickups during the old routine, was the one who first suggested they put something in writing before James's moving date arrived rather than improvise once he was already gone. Ifrah called Treadstone Law that week.

The legal problem

Because Ifrah and James were never married, their parenting arrangement falls under Ontario's Children's Law Reform Act rather than the federal Divorce Act that applies to married and separating spouses. The practical effect is similar — both statutes now use the same core concepts of parenting time (the schedule of when the child is in each parent's care) and decision-making responsibility (authority over major decisions like health care, education and religion) — but the two of them had never had either concept formally assigned. Their old routine existed only by mutual habit.

That mattered for two reasons. First, an informal routine offers no protection if one parent simply decides to change it. Nothing stopped James, once settled in his new city, from proposing a schedule Ifrah found unworkable, or stopped Ifrah from limiting his time in ways he considered unfair — either parent could act unilaterally and the other would have no signed agreement or court order to point to.

Second, and more specifically, the Children's Law Reform Act expects a parent whose own move will have a significant impact on a child's relationship with the other parent to give advance written notice of the move, including the new address and a proposed revised parenting arrangement. James's planned move fit that description, even though their son himself was not the one relocating — a parent's move was about to disrupt an existing routine, and the law expects parents to address that formally rather than let it happen by default.

There was also a live disagreement to resolve. Ifrah wanted their son to stay enrolled in his current Etobicoke school and keep his existing routine, with James's time concentrated into longer blocks — weekends and school breaks — rather than weekly visits. James wanted something closer to an even split, arguing that a two-and-a-half-hour drive was manageable every other weekend plus a substantial chunk of summer. Both were reasonable positions. Neither was obviously right under the law, which asks only what arrangement serves the child's best interests, not which parent's preference is more convenient.

What we did

1. Confirmed there was no existing order or agreement to work from. Because the two of them had never formalized anything, we were building a parenting plan from scratch rather than varying an existing one — which gave both sides more flexibility to negotiate but also meant nothing was locked in as a starting point.
2. Advised Ifrah on the best-interests framework the courts use. Under the Children's Law Reform Act, decisions about parenting time and decision-making responsibility are made based on the child's best interests, considering factors including the child's relationships with each parent, each parent's ability to care for the child, and the child's own views where age-appropriate. A court weighing a long-distance schedule for a six-year-old typically prioritizes school stability and predictability over a rigid even split, which shaped our negotiating position without pretending it guaranteed a particular result.
3. Opened negotiations directly with James before he relocated. We wrote to James — who was not yet represented — proposing a framework rather than a finished document: primary school-year residence with Ifrah, extended time with James on alternating long weekends, a substantial block of summer, and shared holiday time split roughly evenly. James retained his own lawyer shortly after, and the negotiation continued between counsel.
4. Negotiated decision-making responsibility separately from the schedule. The two issues get conflated often, but they are legally distinct. We proposed joint decision-making on major issues — health care, education, and religious upbringing — with day-to-day decisions resting with whichever parent had the child at the time. This let James stay meaningfully involved in his son's life despite the distance, without requiring him to sign off on daily logistics from two and a half hours away.
5. Built in a travel and cost-sharing mechanism. A recurring source of conflict in long-distance parenting plans is who drives, and who pays for it. We proposed splitting the drive at a midpoint and sharing transportation costs, and put both terms directly into the written agreement so they could not become a recurring point of friction.
6. Drafted the plan as a formal separation agreement. Once terms were agreed, we set them out in a written agreement addressing parenting time, decision-making responsibility, travel logistics, and a review mechanism if the arrangement stopped working once school started in September. A formal agreement, properly drafted, can later be filed with the court and enforced like an order if either parent stops following it.

The outcome

The final arrangement was a genuine compromise, not a clean win for either side. Ifrah kept their son enrolled in his current Etobicoke school and residing with her during the school year, which was her top priority. James did not get the near-even split he initially wanted, but secured every alternating long weekend, roughly six weeks of summer, and half of school holidays — considerably more concentrated time than the old routine had given him, even though it looked different on a calendar.

Decision-making responsibility landed as joint on the major issues, which meant James retained a real say in his son's schooling and health care despite living elsewhere — something he had specifically pushed for and was not willing to give up. Ifrah, in turn, had wanted sole decision-making authority given that she would be the day-to-day parent, and did not get it.

Travel became a shared responsibility split at a midpoint city, with costs shared according to each parent's income, reflecting the gap between Ifrah's household income as a sales director and James's as a pharmacist. Neither of them got to avoid the driving entirely, which both had quietly hoped for going in.

The agreement was signed roughly ten weeks after Ifrah's first call, ahead of James's move and before the new school year began — the timeline that mattered most to both of them, since neither wanted their son starting the school year under an arrangement still being negotiated. It included a built-in review point after the first term, an acknowledgment from both sides that a plan drafted before anyone had actually lived it might need adjusting once it met reality.

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