Grandparents' Rights in Ontario

Do Grandparents Have Automatic Rights in Ontario?

Grandparent contact is one of the more emotionally difficult areas of family law, because it can put a child's parents and extended family on opposite sides of the same question: who should be part of a child's life, and how much say does a parent have over that. It is worth stating the general rule clearly at the outset: grandparents in Ontario do not have an automatic legal right to see a grandchild simply because of the family relationship.

Instead, Ontario and federal family law generally give a grandparent (like other non-parents) a legal pathway to ask a court for contact, rather than a guaranteed entitlement. Whether that request succeeds depends on the circumstances of the specific family and, above all, on what a court decides is in the best interests of the child. A parent's own decisions about who spends time with their child are also generally given real weight in that analysis, which means a grandparent who disagrees with a parent's decision cannot simply assume a court will side with them.

How Grandparents Can Seek Contact Under Ontario Law

Ontario's main parenting statute, the Children's Law Reform Act (CLRA), was amended by the Moving Ontario Family Law Forward Act, 2020, with the amendments generally coming into force in 2021. Among other changes, this modernized the Act's language — "custody" became "decision-making responsibility," a parent's "access" became "parenting time," and a non-parent's "access" became "contact with respect to a child," granted through what the Act calls a contact order.

Under the amended CLRA, a person other than a parent of a child — and the Act specifically identifies grandparents as falling within this group — may apply to a court for a contact order. This confirmed and clarified a pathway that grandparents could, in substance, already use before 2021, while giving it clearer statutory footing. An application generally needs to be supported by an affidavit setting out the grandparent's proposed plan for contact with the child, information about any related family court history, and other information relevant to the child's best interests. The court then decides the application using the best-interests test described below.

The Federal "Contact Order" Option

Where a child's parents are married and involved in a divorce proceeding, a separate, federal route can also be available. Amendments to the federal Divorce Act that generally took effect in March 2021 introduced "contact orders," which allow a person who is not a spouse in the case — including a grandparent or another significant person in the child's life — to ask the court for an order setting out their contact with the child.

A key feature of this route is that an application for a contact order generally requires the court's permission, known as "leave," before it can proceed. This leave requirement is generally intended to screen out applications early, reducing the chance that a family already dealing with a divorce is drawn into unnecessary additional litigation. Whether a grandparent's situation is better addressed under the CLRA, the Divorce Act, or both, can depend on the specific family circumstances, including whether a divorce proceeding is already underway.

The Best Interests of the Child Still Governs

Both routes ultimately turn on the same central question: what serves the best interests of the child. Both the CLRA and the Divorce Act direct a court to decide any parenting or contact order — including a contact order sought by a grandparent — only by reference to the child's best interests, giving primary consideration to the child's physical, emotional, and psychological safety, security, and well-being. Read more about how Ontario courts generally approach this test on our page about the best interests of the child.

In practice, this means a grandparent's own wish to remain close to a grandchild, however genuine, is not by itself the deciding factor. The question a court asks is broader: would contact between this grandparent and this child, in these particular circumstances, serve the child's well-being.

What Courts Generally Weigh in These Cases

Because best-interests factors are meant to capture "all factors related to the circumstances of the child," a court's analysis in a grandparent-contact case can draw on many considerations. Generally, these can include:

• The nature and strength of the existing relationship between the grandparent and the child, including any history of a close, caregiving, or otherwise significant bond.
• The child's own views and preferences, to the extent they can be ascertained and are appropriate to consider given the child's age and maturity.
• Whether contact could reasonably occur in other ways — for example, during a parent's own parenting time — without a separate order.
• Any history of conflict, safety concerns, or family violence involving the grandparent, a parent, or the child.
• The parent's own views about the proposed contact, and the reasons behind them.
• The child's need for stability and for arrangements that do not create ongoing conflict between the adults in their life.

This is a general description, not an exhaustive list, and the weight given to any single factor varies from case to case. Courts approach these disputes on the specific facts before them rather than applying a fixed formula.

When a Parent Objects

A common and difficult scenario is one where a child's parent, or both parents together, object to a grandparent having contact. Ontario law does not treat a parent's objection as automatically decisive, but it generally treats a parent's own assessment of what is good for their child as entitled to meaningful weight — particularly where the parents are otherwise fit, involved, and in agreement with each other.

For a grandparent to succeed over a parent's objection, the general expectation is that the grandparent will need to show more than a personal preference to stay involved — some evidence connecting the proposed contact to the child's actual well-being is generally required. At the same time, a parent's objection is not an automatic bar either; where a grandparent can show that contact genuinely serves the child's best interests, a court can still order it notwithstanding a parent's wishes. Each case depends heavily on its own facts, which is part of why these disputes are often difficult to predict.

Options Before Going to Court

Court proceedings over grandparent contact can be slow, costly, and can deepen the very family conflict everyone involved would generally prefer to avoid — particularly since the child is often aware of the dispute. For that reason, many families look for ways to resolve disagreements about grandparent contact before, or instead of, going to court.

• Direct conversation: A calm, specific conversation about what contact might look like — frequency, setting, and expectations — resolves many disputes before they escalate.
• Family counselling: A neutral counsellor can sometimes help parents and grandparents work through underlying tension that is really driving the disagreement.
• Mediation: A family mediator can help the parents and grandparent reach a written understanding about contact, without the cost and formality of a court application. Learn more about getting started with the family court process if mediation does not resolve things and a court application becomes necessary.
• A written agreement: Where everyone can agree on an arrangement, putting it in writing — sometimes as part of a broader parenting agreement — can reduce the chance of future disputes, even though such agreements generally are not enforced by a court in the same way as a court order.

Where a court application does become necessary, a judge may still want to know what, if anything, was tried beforehand to resolve the dispute without litigation.

Other Family Members Beyond Grandparents

Although this page focuses on grandparents, the same general legal framework is not limited to them. Both the CLRA's contact order provisions and the Divorce Act's contact order provisions use broader language — generally referring to "a person other than a parent" — which can extend to other relatives, such as aunts, uncles, adult siblings, or step-parents, as well as to other adults who play a significant role in a child's life. The same best-interests test, and generally the same procedural requirements, apply regardless of the specific relationship between the applicant and the child.

Where a child's own views are relevant to a contact dispute, it can also help to understand how Ontario courts and processes generally try to hear from children appropriately — see our page on the voice of the child in family law matters, and our overview of parenting time for how a parent's own schedule with a child is generally decided.

Frequently Asked Questions