Conclusion
This report includes SFC data from 2018 and 2019, providing insights into custody and access orders from six participating courts in Canada. The majority of custody and access orders were decided on consent, with contested cases making up only a very small percentage of the total orders. Shared and joint custody were more common in consent orders than in contested cases, while sole maternal custody was indicated more often in contested orders.
Joint custody was the most common legal custody arrangement identified in almost two thirds of orders, followed by sole maternal legal custody one quarter of the time. While over half of orders indicated that mothers had sole physical custody, almost one third indicated shared physical custody, an increase compared to previous analyses of SFC data. The largest proportion of sole custody access terms indicated reasonable/liberal access and/or were made on agreement by the parties, while a smaller percentage stipulated more restrictive access terms for the non-custodial parent.
In terms of legal representation in these custody and access cases, mothers had a lawyer representing them more often than fathers did, and in half of orders both parties had legal representation. When examining legal representation and gender of the parent, shared and joint custody were awarded at a similar relative proportion when both parents, neither parent, or only the father had legal representation. Sole maternal custody was more common when only the mother was represented, compared to the likelihood of sole paternal custody when only the father was represented.
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