What Calgary parents search for as emergency custody is, in Alberta law, an urgent application for a parenting order under the Divorce Act, for married parents, or the Family Law Act, for all guardians, brought to the Court of King’s Bench on the basis that the arrangements for a child cannot wait for the ordinary process. The situations that bring parents to the firm on this basis include a parent who has withheld a child and cut off all contact, a child left in the care of someone unsafe, a change of residence made without agreement, and a parent who has announced an imminent move with the children. The Court of King’s Bench treats a matter of parenting time, contact or communication with a child that cannot reasonably be delayed as urgent, and it treats a risk of harm to a child as urgent in every case.
An urgent parenting application is won or lost on the affidavit. The Court needs to see, in specific and dated detail, why the child’s situation cannot wait, what order is being asked for, and why that order is in the child’s best interests, which, under both statutes, is the only question the Court decides. Where the emergency involves a risk of harm or of removal from Alberta, the application can be brought without notice to the other parent, with a return date on which both sides are heard; in every other case, the other parent is entitled to notice and to file a response, often within days. The interim order made at an urgent hearing tends to set the arrangements the family lives with until the matter is finally resolved, which makes the quality of that first application the most important work in the case.
Keystone Legal prepares and argues urgent parenting applications at the Calgary Courts Centre and responds to them when the other parent has brought the application. The work begins with an intake conversation directed at the facts that meet the Court’s definition of urgency, then the commencing document, the urgent request to the Court, the affidavit and its exhibits, service where notice is required, and attendance at the hearing in person. Where a Mandatory Intake Triage Justice has already been assigned to the family, the urgent request is directed to that Justice, and the firm handles that step as well. Where the emergency is part of a wider dispute, the firm frames the urgent application so that it does not prejudice the parenting case that follows.
Calgary parents engage Keystone Legal for urgent parenting matters through a confidential virtual process, with in-person meetings arranged as needed, in English or French. The firm accepts urgent parenting applications for matters proceeding through the Calgary Courts Centre. If a child’s situation cannot wait, call (587) 328-3328 and say the matter is urgent.
