Why Equal Parenting Time Did Not Mean Equal Child Support

The situation

Deepa and Vikram had lived together in Innisfil for close to eight years without marrying. They had one daughter together, Lucia, then eight years old, and by early 2026 had decided to separate on reasonably good terms. Both wanted to avoid a drawn-out legal process. They agreed on a parenting schedule that split Lucia's week almost exactly down the middle, and they used a free online template to draft a separation agreement covering parenting time, property, and support.

Deepa worked as a software developer earning roughly $102,000 a year. Vikram worked as a pharmacist earning roughly $118,000. Between salary, a shared home with meaningful equity, and some investment accounts, their household finances were solidly upper-middle income, but neither had been through a separation before, and neither had a background in family law. The template they used included a line for child support. They filled it in with a dollar figure of zero, on the reasoning that since Lucia would split her time evenly between two homes, each parent would simply cover her costs while she was with them, and nothing further needed to change hands.

Before either of them signed anything, Deepa contacted Treadstone Law for independent legal advice — a step her template's instructions recommended, and one that matters more than most people realize when a separation agreement is being prepared without a lawyer involved from the start.

What the review found

The assumption behind the draft agreement is one of the most common misunderstandings in Ontario family law: that equal parenting time cancels out child support. It does not, and the reasoning behind why matters for anyone negotiating their own arrangement.

Child support in Ontario is calculated using the Federal Child Support Guidelines, which apply to separating parents regardless of whether they were married or common-law. Because Deepa and Vikram had lived together in a relationship of some permanence and had a child together, Vikram's support obligation to Lucia was exactly the same in principle as it would have been had they been married — the Guidelines do not distinguish between the two.

Under the Guidelines, when a child spends at least roughly 40 percent of the time with each parent, support is not simply waived. Instead, it is calculated using what is called the set-off method. Each parent's notional support obligation is worked out separately, using the standard support tables based on their own income and the number of children, as though each parent were the one paying full support. Those two table amounts are then set off against each other — the lower is subtracted from the higher — and only the difference changes hands, from the higher-earning parent to the lower-earning one.

Applying that method to Deepa and Vikram's incomes, the table amount for one child came out to roughly $1,050 a month based on Vikram's income, and roughly $920 a month based on Deepa's. The set-off difference was about $130 a month, payable from Vikram to Deepa. It was not a large figure relative to their household income, but it was real money that the draft agreement, as written, would have left on the table indefinitely. Over the roughly ten years remaining until Lucia's eighteenth birthday, that gap added up to somewhere in the neighbourhood of $15,000.

The draft also handled Lucia's extracurricular activities and eventual orthodontic costs by splitting them 50/50, which sounded fair but was not quite right either. Special and extraordinary expenses of that kind are generally shared between parents in proportion to their incomes, not equally. Based on Deepa and Vikram's respective earnings, the proportionate split worked out closer to 46 percent for Deepa and 54 percent for Vikram — a modest difference on any single expense, but one that would have quietly shifted more of Lucia's costs onto Deepa, the lower earner, over years of soccer registrations, braces, and school trips.

What we did

1. Confirmed the parenting schedule actually met the shared-time threshold. The set-off method only applies once a child spends close to 40 percent or more of the time with each parent. We reviewed the proposed calendar in detail rather than taking the round number "50/50" at face value, since real schedules often drift once school terms, work travel, and holidays are accounted for, and confirmed the arrangement genuinely qualified.
2. Recalculated support using the correct set-off method. We ran the table amounts for both incomes independently, then set them off against each other to produce the roughly $130 monthly figure owed from Vikram to Deepa, and explained in plain terms why a $0 figure in the draft did not reflect what the Guidelines actually require.
3. Corrected the special expenses clause to a proportionate split. We revised the clause covering extracurricular activities, orthodontics, and similar costs so that each parent's share tracked their income proportion rather than a flat 50/50 division, and recommended a mechanism for updating that proportion if either income changed materially in future years.
4. Prepared a written summary of the issues for Deepa to bring back to Vikram. Because Vikram was not our client and had not had his own legal advice, we did not negotiate with him directly. Instead we gave Deepa a clear, non-adversarial explanation of the set-off calculation and the proportionate expense-sharing rule that she could share with him, along with the reasoning, so the correction could be made collaboratively rather than as a dispute.
5. Reviewed the final agreement before signing. Once Vikram had a chance to consider the correction — and, we later learned, had briefly sought his own advice on it — the couple returned an updated draft. We reviewed the final version to confirm the support and expense clauses matched the Guidelines calculation, along with the property and parenting terms, before advising Deepa she could sign.

The outcome

Vikram accepted the correction without significant pushback once the calculation was explained to him. The couple's finalized separation agreement included the roughly $130 monthly set-off payment and the proportionate, income-based approach to Lucia's special expenses, reviewable if either parent's income changed by a meaningful amount. Both signed with independent legal advice on record, which strengthens an agreement's standing if either party later tried to argue they had not understood what they were agreeing to.

Nothing about this case involved a court appearance, a dispute that needed resolving after the fact, or a parent discovering years later that their agreement had shorted their child. The error was caught on paper, before signatures, while it was still a five-minute conversation instead of a legal problem. That is the version of this story that plays out far less often than it should — most people who use a template on their own have no way of knowing that "equal time" is not the same thing as "equal cost," and many separation agreements with exactly this error get signed and simply never revisited.

For Deepa and Vikram, the practical effect was straightforward: roughly $130 a month moving from Vikram to Deepa, and Lucia's future extracurricular and medical costs split closer to 46/54 than 50/50. Small numbers on their own, but multiplied across a decade of parenting a child together, they represented a meaningful and entirely avoidable gap that a properly reviewed agreement closed before it ever opened.

What you can learn from this