A child’s passport and a parent’s plan to travel with a child are two of the most common flashpoints after separation. The Passport Program expects every parent or legal guardian to sign a child’s passport application and may contact the other parent before a passport is issued. Where the parents are separated or divorced, and a court order or agreement gives the other parent rights in relation to the child, it requires evidence that issuing the passport is not contrary to that order or agreement. A parent who refuses to sign or provide a consent letter for a trip can therefore stop a passport application or the trip outright unless a court order resolves the issue.
The Court of King’s Bench can make an order dispensing with a parent’s consent to a passport application, directing that a passport be issued and specifying who holds it, authorizing specific travel with a child and setting the conditions of that travel, or, on the other side of the same dispute, prohibiting travel where there is a real risk that the child will not be returned. These orders are made as terms of a parenting order under the Divorce Act or the Family Law Act, in the child’s best interests. Where the trip is imminent, the matter can be brought as an urgent application on the basis that it cannot reasonably be delayed; where the concern is that a parent will use a trip to remove the child permanently, the application becomes a non-removal application, and the Court treats the risk of removal from the jurisdiction as urgent in its own right.
Keystone Legal brings and responds to passport and travel applications at the Calgary Courts Centre. For the parent who wants to travel, the firm prepares the correspondence and consent documents that resolve most disputes without going to court, and, where they do not, the application and affidavit setting out the itinerary, the return arrangements, and the child’s ties to Calgary. For the parent who objects, the firm assembles evidence of risk to justify conditions or a prohibition, including the other parent’s connections to the destination and any history of withholding the child. In both cases, the draft order is written so that a passport office, an airline or a border officer can read it and act on it.
Calgary parents engage Keystone Legal for passport and travel disputes through a confidential virtual process, with in-person meetings by arrangement, in English or French. The firm accepts these matters where they proceed through the Calgary Courts Centre. If a trip or a passport application is time-sensitive, call (587) 328-3328.
