An Affidavit is an extremely important court document that provides the Honourable Court and the parties with factual information that is sworn/affirmed to be true. If you are in court for a family matter involving children, you may have to file your own Family Law Affidavit for parenting to provide your side of the story and your position on the issues that are before the Honourable Court. Your Affidavit must be true and accurate to the best of your abilities. It is a punishable offence to deliberately provide untrue information in an Affidavit.
COURT FORMS AND RULES
If your family matter is in the Alberta, you must make sure that your Affidavit uses the correct form and follows the applicable rules. The court forms for the Alberta Court of Justice can be found here and the Court of King’s Bench Affidavit template can be downloaded here. For the Court of King’s Bench, Practice Note 2 sets out the rules for family court for regular and special applications. The Alberta Rules of Court are always applicable. Once you have a form for your Affidavit and you have read the rules, you are ready to write your Affidavit.
INTRODUCTION
To write a Family Law Affidavit for parenting, you should start by writing a paragraph or two introducing yourself, the other party and the details of your relationship or marriage and the full names and the dates of birth of your children. The introduction paragraphs of your Affidavit should aim to summarize who you are and why you are writing your Affidavit. For example, you could say that you are making or responding to an application for shared parenting and that you want day-to-day parenting time of your children.
BACKGROUND HISTORY
After you have set the stage for your Affidavit with your introduction paragraphs, you are ready to start writing the background information for your Family Law Affidavit for parenting. You should be prepared to explain in writing when you started a relationship with the other parent, if and when you lived together, and the circumstances at the time that you became parents by birth, adoption or other means and the roles that you each played in parenting responsibilities from birth and up to the date of your separation.
SEPARATION
After you have briefly explained your history with your child’s other parent and your roles in parenting up to the time of your separation (or when you stopped getting along with your co-parent if you never lived together), you should aim to explain in detail what the parenting schedule has been since that time. If court orders were granted for parenting, include a summary of the court history and orders that were granted.
CURRENT SITUATION
Once you have painted the full picture of what has transpired since your separation (or when your co-parenting relationship deteriorated), you should use your best efforts to provide detailed information on the current parenting situation up to and including the date that you will swear/affirm your Family Law Affidavit for parenting. Most likely, for the first several paragraphs of your Affidavit, your Affidavit has been focused on highlighting yours and your co-parents roles and parenting history. It’s important to eventually transition your focus on your children at this present time and what would be best for them in the future.
The Honourable Court will only grant an order for a child that is found to be in the best interest of the child as defined at section 16 of Divorce Act (Canada) or section 18 of the Family Law Act. With this in mind, it’s important to include information in your Family Law Affidavit for parenting that will help the Honourable Court learn more about your child. For example, describe your child’s personality, their medical history and current state of health, their interests or hobbies, whether your child participates in any sports or wants to join any extracurricular activities, what is their daily routine, etc.
After you have clearly identified who your child is an individual, for each child, it is important to explain your position for parenting and why you believe that your proposed parenting schedule is in your child’s best interest. You should try to write in detail what your child’s day-to-day routine would be like and how that would be different or perhaps better compared to the current schedule. If the child’s other parent has proposed a parenting schedule that you do not agree with, highlight your concerns with respect to their proposal.
EXHIBITS
If you have evidence such as documents or pictures that prove you are telling the truth, you can attach them as an Exhibit to your Family Law Affidavit for parenting. At the appropriate paragraph of your Affidavit, include the phrase “Attached hereto and marked as Exhibit “_” is [summarize what it is].” You must label your exhibits and they will need to be signed by the Commissioner for Oaths at the time that you swear/affirm your Family Law Affidavit for parenting. Keep in mind that you may be limited to a certain number of pages for your exhibits, and you may require a table of contents and page numbers depending on the level of court where you will file your Family Law Affidavit for parenting.
Final Thoughts
If you have any questions regarding the steps that you should take or if you want legal advice regarding how to write your Family Affidavit for parenting, you should speak with a family law lawyer about your situation as soon as possible. A family lawyer can provide an opinion on the fairness of your past, current or future parenting arrangements and give you advice on which information to include or what you steps you should take to achieve your desired parenting schedule. If you need a referral to a family law lawyer or a professional who may be able to assist you, contact the Edmonton Family Network to discuss your options.
