Under Alberta’s Family Law Act, each guardian of a child is entitled to be informed of, consulted about and to make all significant decisions affecting the child, and the powers of guardianship expressly include decisions about the child’s education, including the place of education, as well as the child’s residence, health care, and religious and cultural upbringing. When separated guardians cannot agree on which school a child will attend, whether a child will be moved to a new school, whether a treatment or counselling will proceed, or how a child will be raised, either guardian can apply to the Court for a parenting order that decides the question. Where the decision has a deadline, as school registration and the first day of classes do every August and September, the matter can be brought to the Court of King’s Bench as an urgent application on the basis that it cannot reasonably be delayed.
The Court decides these disputes on the child’s best interests alone, and in a schooling dispute, that means evidence about the child’s current school and community, the programs and supports available at each proposed school, the travel each option requires from each parent’s home, the child’s own views where the child is old enough to express them, and the effect of a mid-year move. For married parents, the same question arises under the Divorce Act as an allocation of decision-making responsibility. Where one parent has enrolled a child unilaterally, the application may seek an order dispensing with that parent’s consent, an order directing the child’s continued attendance at the existing school, or an order directing a change, and the parents may agree, or be directed, to have the question decided by a mediator or arbitrator while the child’s existing school is preserved in the meantime.
Keystone Legal represents guardians in urgent school enrolment and decision-making disputes at the Calgary Courts Centre and brings the same issues to a mediator or arbitrator where the parents agree to that route. The firm’s work starts with correspondence to the other parent setting out a clear position and a deadline, then, where agreement is not reached, the commencing document, the urgent request, an affidavit built around the best-interests evidence and the school documents, and attendance at the hearing. Where the other parent has already filed, the firm prepares the response and the client’s affidavit within the short timeline that urgent matters allow, and works to have the school question decided before the deadline that made it urgent.
Calgary guardians engage Keystone Legal for decision-making disputes through a confidential virtual process, in English or French, with in-person meetings arranged where they help. The firm accepts these applications where they proceed through the Calgary Courts Centre. If a school or medical decision has a deadline, call (587) 328-3328.
