Decision-making responsibility vs custody, are the older summaries just using old words
My materials use decision-making responsibility and parenting time. Every secondhand summary I can find online says custody and access.
Is this a vocabulary change or is there a different test I am meant to be applying.
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Typing this on my phone but will confirm once home however IIRC From 1 March 2021 the Divorce Act changed custody to decision-making responsibility and access to parenting time, and added a contact order for people who are not parents, grandparents being the obvious case. Ontario amended the Children's Law Reform Act to line up, so both statutes now use the same words.
The Best interests of the child thing is the same as before. But what did change is that the factors are now written into the statute, at *s.16(3) *of the Divorce Act and s.24(3) of the CLRA, instead of living in case law. So a question that hands you a list of facts can be walked against a list.
Practical version. Use the current words, apply the same test, and treat a question that mentions a grandparent as pointing at a contact order rather than at parenting time.
*EDITED: Confirmed the above now that I checked my materials and update it with the right sections.
so if a question says custody I read it as the same concept and not as a trick
That is how I have been treating it. Orders made before the change did not have to be reworded either, so the old language is still out there in live orders.
this is my case for not touching anyone elses summary from more than two or three years ago. family and criminal have both moved and you cannot tell from a pdf what year it was written
Isn't it also true how the CLRA starts from both parents being equally entitled to decision-making responsibility. The Divorce Act has no equivalent presumption. So which statute the question is under can change your starting point before you get anywhere near the factors.
did not know that at all, my notes treat the two as interchangeable
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