Building a Parenting Plan Around a Child's Routine in Sarnia

The situation

Bohdan and Andriy had been together for six years and had never married. Their daughter, Marcia, was five and had been diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder two years earlier. She was in a structured routine: the same wake-up time, the same drop-off at her school's early years program, twice-weekly speech and occupational therapy sessions on fixed days, and a bedtime sequence that had taken months to establish and that fell apart quickly when disrupted. Bohdan worked as an office manager for a Sarnia manufacturing supplier, with steady nine-to-five hours. Andriy worked as a real estate agent, with a schedule built around showings, open houses and closings that shifted week to week and often ran into evenings and weekends.

When the couple separated, they agreed quickly that they both wanted to stay closely involved in Marcia's life. What they could not agree on was how. Because they had never married, there was no divorce process forcing the question onto a timeline — but there was also no existing court order or agreement setting out parenting time or decision-making responsibility, the legal term for the authority to make significant decisions about a child's health, education and general wellbeing. Under Ontario's Children's Law Reform Act, unmarried parents have the same rights and obligations toward their children as married ones; the absence of a marriage certificate changes nothing about what the law expects here.

What made this different

Andriy proposed a standard rotating schedule — a week with one parent, then a week with the other, alternating. It is a common arrangement, and on paper it looked fair: equal time, equal say. Bohdan's concern was that it ignored what actually kept Marcia regulated. Her therapists had been clear that transitions were hard for her, and that inconsistency in her sleep and meal routines produced days of dysregulation afterward — meltdowns at school, disrupted sleep, therapy sessions that made little progress because she arrived unsettled. A full week away from her established routine, twice a month, was not something Bohdan believed she could absorb well, particularly given Andriy's schedule meant the days in his care would not always follow the same pattern.

This is where a case like Bohdan and Marcia's differs from a straightforward custody dispute. Ontario family law does not start from a presumption of equal time. The test that governs every decision about a child — parenting time, decision-making, anything else — is the best interests of the child, and the Children's Law Reform Act sets out the specific factors a court, or two parents negotiating without one, are supposed to weigh. Among them: the child's needs, given their age and stage of development; each parent's ability and willingness to care for those specific needs; and the stability that would result from any proposed arrangement. A special needs diagnosis does not entitle one parent to more time by default, but it does mean the child's particular needs carry real weight in shaping what a workable plan looks like. The question was never who loved Marcia more. It was which schedule could actually deliver her routine.

What we did

1. Started from Marcia's routine, not from a template schedule. Rather than opening with a proposed split of days, we worked with Bohdan to map out Marcia's actual week — school hours, both therapy appointments, medication timing, and the wind-down routine that got her to sleep without a meltdown. That map became the anchor for every scheduling conversation that followed, so the discussion stayed focused on what Marcia needed rather than on what felt equal between the two adults.
2. Proposed a primary-residence structure with substantial, predictable time for Andriy. Instead of alternating weeks, we suggested Marcia live primarily with Bohdan during the school week, with Andriy having her every weekend from Friday after school through Sunday evening, plus one weeknight dinner visit. This gave Andriy real, frequent time with his daughter — more overnights across a month than many standard schedules provide — while keeping her school and weekday therapy routine anchored to one household.
3. Split decision-making by domain instead of requiring joint agreement on everything. Full joint decision-making, where both parents must agree before any significant decision is made, can work well for many families but tends to slow things down when disagreement is likely — and therapy and school decisions for a child with additional needs often come up on short notice. We proposed Bohdan hold decision-making responsibility for Marcia's medical and therapy care, given his day-to-day involvement in appointments and his more predictable ability to attend them, with both parents retaining joint decision-making over education and any major non-medical decisions.
4. Built in a review point rather than treating the plan as fixed forever. Andriy's understandable worry was that a routine-focused schedule now would harden into permanence even as Marcia grew older and possibly more adaptable to change. We addressed that directly by including a scheduled review of the parenting time arrangement in two years, with either parent able to raise it sooner if Marcia's needs or either parent's circumstances changed materially.
5. Negotiated directly with Andriy rather than starting a court application. Because both parents were willing to talk and neither was disputing the other's fitness as a parent, we approached Andriy directly with the proposed structure and the reasoning behind it, supported by a letter from Marcia's treating team describing her routine needs in plain terms. Family court applications in Sarnia, like most Ontario jurisdictions, can take many months to resolve and tend to entrench positions rather than soften them; a negotiated agreement reached while both parents were still cooperating was faster and far more likely to hold.

The outcome

Andriy agreed to the structure with two changes: he wanted the weeknight dinner visit moved to whichever evening worked best around his showing schedule that week, rather than fixed to one day, and he wanted an explicit right to attend Marcia's therapy sessions when his schedule allowed, even on Bohdan's residential days. Both were reasonable and were built into the final parenting plan, which the parents signed as a separation agreement rather than taking to court for a formal order. The agreement is not a court order, which means it relies on both parents' continued cooperation to work — but it also meant no litigation, no months of uncertainty for Marcia, and a plan both parents had a hand in shaping rather than one imposed on them.

Six months in, the arrangement was holding. Marcia's school reported fewer disrupted days than in the period right after the separation, and her therapists noted steadier progress once her weekday routine stabilized. Andriy's weekend time gave him real, unhurried involvement in her life without requiring him to match Bohdan's fixed schedule during the week. The decision-making split meant therapy adjustments could happen without delay, while bigger questions about her schooling stayed a shared decision between both parents. It was not an equal-time arrangement in the way a rotating week is, but it was a functioning one — and for a child whose stability depended on routine, functioning mattered more than symmetry.

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