Where the other parent refuses to hand over the children for scheduled parenting time, cancels exchanges without cause or stops complying with the order altogether, the parent who is denied time has remedies. Alberta’s Family Law Act allows a person with a right to time with a child under a parenting order, a contact order, or a Divorce Act order to apply for an enforcement order if time has been denied within the preceding twelve months. 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 a parent who has been entirely cut off from a child will usually be in that position.
An enforcement order can require the other parent to provide compensatory time to make up what was lost, to post security for future compliance, to reimburse the necessary expenses actually incurred because of the denial, and to pay a penalty of up to $100 for each day of denial, to a maximum of $5,000, with further consequences if the penalty is not paid. The Court may decline to enforce where the denial was excusable, so the evidence must establish the schedule, each missed exchange, the communications surrounding it, and the absence of any legitimate reason. A sustained pattern of denial is also relevant to any later application to vary the parenting order itself, and persistent breach of a court order can be pursued as contempt in the Court of King’s Bench.
Keystone Legal brings enforcement applications for parents who are being denied time and defends parents who are accused of denying it where the refusal was justified by a real concern for the child. The firm’s approach rests on the documents and the order: a log of every scheduled exchange and what occurred at it, the messages exchanged and the costs incurred are assembled into an affidavit from which the Court can see the pattern in a single reading. Where the denial is total and current, the firm brings the matter as an urgent application; where it is a pattern over months, the firm pairs the enforcement application with an application to vary the parenting order so that the arrangement giving rise to the denials is itself corrected.
The practice is virtual, so meetings take place by video, telephone and email, with in-person meetings available on request in Cochrane or in Calgary. Advice is available in English or in French. Contested matters proceed at the Calgary Courts Centre, where counsel appears in person, and advisory and uncontested work is available anywhere in Alberta. If you are being kept from your children, call (587) 328-3328.
