Relocating With Your Child After a Separation: The Rules

Since March 2021, a parent who wants to move with their child must give 60 days’ written notice and follow a precise procedure — or risk seeing the plan blocked outright.

Julie lives in Gatineau. Since the separation, her seven-year-old son Léo spends one week with her, one week with his father Marc, in Aylmer. In May, Julie receives a job offer in Quebec City: better pay, a permanent position, and her mother lives twenty minutes from the apartment she has spotted. She signs a lease for July 1, then breaks the news to Marc by text message, on a Tuesday evening. Marc is floored and calls a lawyer the next morning. Julie calls hers two days later, once she realizes her move might simply not happen. This scene plays out every spring in the Outaouais, and the nasty surprise almost always comes from the same place: acting before talking.

“Relocation”: what exactly are we talking about?

Since March 1, 2021, the Divorce Act no longer speaks of “custody” or “access.” It speaks of parenting time (the time the child spends with each parent) and decision-making responsibility (the authority to settle the big questions: health, education, religion). The Act then distinguishes two situations. A simple change in place of residence (s. 16.8): you need only notify the other parent in writing, giving the expected date, the new address and your contact information. No fixed deadline, no form.

A relocation, by contrast, is a move likely to have a significant impact on the child’s relationship with the other parent, or with a person who has contact with the child under an order. The Act sets no kilometre threshold. The test is practical: does the parenting-time schedule still hold up once the last box is packed? If not, it is a relocation. Moving from Gatineau to Chelsea on a week-about schedule will probably change nothing; moving from Gatineau to Quebec City will. The rule also covers a parent who moves alone, if the departure upends the calendar.

The frequent trap: believing the procedure applies only beyond Quebec’s borders. A move from one end of the province to the other can perfectly well be a “relocation.”

The 60-day written notice: the mandatory starting point

A parent who intends to relocate must notify the other at least sixty days before the expected date, in the prescribed form (s. 16.9). Justice Canada makes the form available online free of charge.

The notice must contain three things: the expected date, the new address and contact information, and the proposed reorganization of parenting time, decision-making responsibility or contact. The third is the one people forget. It is not a courtesy: the law requires you to put a replacement schedule on the table. Every other weekend, an extra week in the summer, sharing the driving and the tickets — write it down.

There is a safety valve. The court may, on an application made without notice to the other party, exempt a parent from these requirements or modify them, notably where there is a risk of family violence. No one has to disclose their new address to a dangerous ex.

The frequent trap: the improvised Tuesday-night text. An incomplete or late notice can be treated as though it had never been given, and the judge will expressly consider whether notice was given or not.

Thirty days to object, and what happens next

The parent who receives the notice has thirty days from receipt to object (s. 16.91). Two ways to do it: complete the prescribed objection form, or apply directly to the court. The form must set out the objection, its reasons and the objector’s views on the proposed reorganization.

If no one objects within thirty days and no order prohibits the move, the parent may relocate on the stated date. Silence means green light.

One nuance that changes everything: if the objection comes by form, it is the parent who wants to leave who will have to seek the court’s authorization. If it comes by application to the court, the judicial debate is already under way.

The frequent trap: letting the thirty days slip by, hoping that an agreement will eventually come.

Who must convince the judge? The Act’s three scenarios

This is where the reform brought the most predictability. Section 16.93 assigns the burden of proof according to the actual division of time — provided the parties substantially comply with the order, arbitral award or agreement in force.

If the time spent with each parent is substantially equal, the parent who wants to move must show that the relocation is in the child’s best interests. If the child spends the vast majority of their time with the parent who wants to leave, the objecting parent must show the contrary. In every other case, each side must make its own proof. The court may set these rules aside where the order at issue is merely interim (s. 16.94).

The judge then reviews the factors in section 16.92: the reasons for the relocation, its impact on the child, the time each parent spends with the child and their level of involvement, whether notice was given, the existence of a clause fixing the area where the child is to live, the reasonableness of the proposed reorganization in light of travel costs, and compliance with past obligations. To these are added the general best-interests factors of section 16, including family violence.

The Act now prohibits the question that used to poison these debates: “Would you move anyway, without the child?” It was a trap with two doors. Answering yes made you look detached; answering no scuttled your own plan.

The analytical framework goes back to Gordon v. Goertz, decided by the Supreme Court in 1996: no presumption in favour of the custodial parent, and a case-by-case review of the child’s best interests. The debate is not closed, though: Justice L’Heureux-Dubé wrote concurring reasons arguing for more deference to the parent who shoulders the daily routine. In 2022, in Barendregt v. Grebliunas, the Supreme Court confirmed this framework and reiterated that the “maximum contact” principle is not a free-standing rule: it counts only insofar as that contact serves the child’s best interests. The Court even suggested speaking from now on of the “parenting time factor.” Finally, a court that authorizes a relocation may apportion between the parents the travel costs related to parenting time (s. 16.95).

Unmarried parents, and the trap of the quiet departure

Sections 16.8 to 16.96 live in the Divorce Act: they apply to spouses and former spouses. Parents who were never married — including those in a union parentale (Quebec’s parental union regime for unmarried parents with children, in force since June 30, 2025) — are not subject to the sixty-day notice. The Civil Code of Québec provides for none.

That emphatically does not mean you can leave without a word. Where difficulties arise in the exercise of parental authority, any holder of that authority may apply to the court, which will rule in the child’s best interests after encouraging the parties toward conciliation (art. 604 C.c.Q.). And every decision concerning a child must be made in the child’s interest and with respect for the child’s rights (art. 33 C.c.Q.). Quebec courts apply the same analytical grid as under the Divorce Act.

The real trap, married or not, is the fait accompli. Leaving quietly can breach an existing judgment, and the parent left behind can obtain within days a safeguard order — a temporary order that freezes the situation while the merits are being debated (art. 49 C.p.c.). Unilateral conduct is, moreover, among the factors the judge weighs. Many a parent has had to turn around, lease signed and truck already unloaded.

Key takeaways

First check whether your file falls under the Divorce Act: the sixty-day notice applies only to spouses and former spouses.
A move is a “relocation” as soon as it upends the parenting-time schedule, regardless of distance.
Give the written notice at least sixty days ahead, on the official form, proposing a realistic replacement schedule.
If you receive a notice, you have thirty days to object, by form or by court application. Past that deadline, the departure is authorized.
The burden of proof follows the actual division of parenting time.
Do not sign a lease before the issue is settled, and consult a lawyer four to six months before the intended departure.