Custody, Guardianship, Parenting Time - Alberta's Confusing Terminology, Untangled

People still walk into our office asking for “custody” of their kids. It’s the word everyone knows – the word from every courtroom drama, the word your parents used, the word your friends use. Here’s the part that surprises most people: in Alberta, “custody” hasn’t been the correct legal term since 2005. That’s not a typo. Alberta dropped it sixteen years before the federal government did.

The confusion isn’t really your fault. Alberta families can be governed by two different pieces of legislation, each with its own vocabulary, and which one applies to you depends on a question most people never think to ask: are you married and getting divorced, or not?

Two Laws, Two Vocabularies

The federal Divorce Act applies only to married couples who are separating and seeking an actual divorce.

Alberta’s own Family Law Act applies to everyone else – married couples not seeking a divorce, unmarried parents, and Adult Interdependent Partners. It also covers things the Divorce Act doesn’t touch, like establishing who a child’s legal parents are.

Whether your case runs through one, the other, or occasionally both, is the single biggest factor in which terminology – and which court forms – actually apply to your family.

Alberta Dropped “Custody” Back in 2005

When Alberta’s Family Law Act came into force on October 1, 2005, it never used the words “custody” or “access” at all. From day one, it used three different terms:

• Guardianship – the legal status that carries the authority to make significant decisions for a child: where they go to school, their medical care, their religious upbringing. Both parents are usually automatically their child’s guardians. In the right circumstances, a step-parent, grandparent, or other caregiver can become a guardian too. Guardianship gives you the legal right to make major decisions about your child’s life – school, healthcare, religion. Our child custody, parenting & guardianship services can help you understand exactly what authority your order gives you.”
• Parenting time – the time a child is actually in your care. During your parenting time, you can make the day-to-day calls – meals, bedtime, homework – without needing to consult anyone.
• Contact – time granted to someone who isn’t a guardian, most often a grandparent, so they can maintain a relationship with the child.

If you’ve never been married and separated from your child’s other parent, this is almost certainly the framework your family falls under.

The Federal Government Caught Up in 2021

For married couples, the Divorce Act still used “custody” and “access” for decades after Alberta had moved on. That finally changed on March 1, 2021, when federal amendments replaced those terms with:

• Decision-making responsibility – the equivalent of Alberta’s “guardianship”: authority over the big decisions in a child’s life.
• Parenting time – same concept, same name, as Alberta’s Family Law Act.
• Contact – again, the same term for a non-parent’s time with a child.

So the two systems have effectively converged on the same ideas. The only real difference left is what the decision-making piece is called: “guardianship” under Alberta law, “decision-making responsibility” under the federal Divorce Act.

So Which One Applies to You?

• Married and getting a divorce → the federal Divorce Act. Your order will use “decision-making responsibility,” “parenting time,” and “contact.”
• Never married, common-law, or married but not divorcing → Alberta’s Family Law Act. Your order will use “guardianship,” “parenting time,” and “contact.”

If you already have an older order that still says “custody” or “access,” it’s still fully valid – you don’t need to fix it just because the words changed. But if you ever go back to court to vary that order, the application proceeds under whichever Act the original order was made under, using that Act’s current language.