Child Custody Statistics Canada [2026]

According to Statistics Canada 2021, approximately 5.3 million Canadian adults experienced a union ending with a dependent child — and in 50.4% of those separations, mothers held sole custody while fathers held sole custody in only 9.6% of cases. This post covers child custody statistics in Canada: sole vs. shared arrangements, gender splits, trends since 2006, and what contested litigation actually produces, sourced from Statistics Canada and the Department of Justice Canada. See the full family law research hub for related data.

What is child custody in Canada under the Divorce Act?

In Canada, “custody” refers to the legal authority to make major decisions about a child’s upbringing and the right to have the child live with a parent. Under the Divorce Act (RSC 1985, c. 3), all parenting arrangements are governed by the child’s best interests as the paramount consideration.

Bill C-78 amended the Divorce Act on March 1, 2021, replacing the old “custody and access” framework with “parenting time” and “decision-making responsibility.” Under the amended Act, “parenting time” is the schedule of time a child spends with each parent, while “decision-making responsibility,” defined in section 2(1), covers authority over significant decisions about a child’s well-being — including health, education, culture, language, religion, and significant extracurricular activities. A court may make a “parenting order” under section 16.1, with the child’s best interests as the sole criterion under section 16, per the Department of Justice Canada 2021.

Section 16 of the amended Act requires courts to give “primary consideration to the child’s physical, emotional and psychological safety, security and well-being” when making a parenting order, and sets out specific best-interests factors including the child’s needs, relationships with each parent, cultural heritage, family violence history, and each parent’s willingness to support the child’s relationship with the other parent, per the Department of Justice Canada. Section 7.1 also creates a duty on parties and their lawyers to attempt family dispute resolution — such as mediation or collaborative law — before resorting to litigation, unless the circumstances make it inappropriate (for example, where family violence is present), per the Department of Justice Canada 2019.

Note: because “custody” remains the term Canadians commonly search for and understand, this post uses both the old vocabulary and the current legal terminology. All court orders issued since March 1, 2021, use “parenting order,” “parenting time,” and “decision-making responsibility” — not “custody.”

• The Divorce Act applies to married couples who divorce; common-law separations are governed by provincial family law, which varies by province.
• “Physical custody” (where the child lives) and “legal custody” (who makes decisions) can be allocated independently.
• Sole custody means one parent holds both physical care and decision-making authority; joint or shared arrangements distribute one or both elements between the parents.
• Since March 2021, formal legal language under the Divorce Act uses “parenting time” and “decision-making responsibility” instead of “custody” and “access.”

How custody is divided: sole, shared, and joint arrangements

Two national data sources cover custody arrangements in Canada: court-order data from the Department of Justice Canada’s Survey of Family Courts (SFC) 2018–19, and self-reported data from Statistics Canada’s 2017 General Social Survey (GSS). They measure different things — the SFC captures what courts formally order; the GSS captures what parents actually live — and they tell somewhat different stories.

Physical custody: court-order data (SFC 2018–19)

According to Department of Justice Canada 2021, physical custody in court orders across six Canadian superior courts broke down as follows:

Legal custody (decision-making): court-order data (SFC 2018–19)

For legal custody — now called “decision-making responsibility” under the 2021 amendments — joint arrangements were the most common outcome. According to Department of Justice Canada 2021:

Self-reported custody: GSS 2017

Self-reported data from Statistics Canada 2021 paints a different picture. Among approximately 1.23 million Canadian parents whose most recent union ended with a dependent child, 33.7% reported having sole custody themselves, 10.4% reported the ex-partner held sole custody, and 52.6% reported a shared arrangement — a notably higher shared-custody proportion than court-order data shows, reflecting the many private agreements reached outside courts. For more context on how separation and divorce intersect with parenting arrangements, see our divorce statistics Canada overview.

Child custody by gender: who gets custody in Canada?

The gender gap in Canadian child custody outcomes is well-documented in both court-order data and self-reported surveys. The figures below are from Statistics Canada 2021 (GSS Cycle 31 Table t001e) and Department of Justice Canada 2021 (SFC 2018–19).

Mothers were far more likely to hold sole custody; fathers were more likely to be in shared arrangements than to have sole custody. Per Statistics Canada, fathers reported non-sole custody in 63.0% of cases — meaning for most separated fathers, the standard outcome is a shared arrangement, not sole custody.

An earlier snapshot from Statistics Canada 2014 (GSS Cycle 25, 2011) found that 70% of children from separated or divorced families lived primarily with their mother, 15% primarily with their father, and 9% in equal time-sharing arrangements. While this data is from the 2011 GSS cycle, it provides context for the period before shared custody began its rapid growth.

The 2017 GSS also found a notable provincial difference: Quebec had a higher proportion of mothers who did not have sole custody compared with other provinces, consistent with Quebec’s distinct civil law system and different family law practice patterns. Half (52%) of all parents who did not have sole custody saw their child at least once per week, and this rate was similar for both mothers and fathers, per Statistics Canada 2021.

How custody outcomes have changed since 2006

Shared physical custody has grown dramatically in Canadian court orders over two decades. The following table presents the trend across three time periods using court-order data from the Department of Justice Canada 2021 (SFC 2018–19) and Department of Justice Canada 2017 (JustFacts).

The pre-2006 baseline of ~79% sole maternal custody comes from Department of Justice Canada (Selected Statistics, c. 2000), which recorded sole maternal custody at 79.3%, sole paternal at 6.6%, and shared at 12.8% — making the current 56%/7%/31% split a significant structural change over roughly two decades.

The JustFacts report (November 2017) documented the same trend for consent and contested orders separately: shared physical custody rose from 12% of consent orders (pre-2006) to 28% in 2014–15, and from 10% to 23% in contested orders, per Department of Justice Canada 2017.

The trend in joint legal custody was equally pronounced. The proportion of contested orders resulting in joint legal custody nearly doubled between pre-2006 (35%) and 2014–15 (53%), while for consent orders it rose from 61% to 66%. By 2018–19, joint legal custody across all orders reached 61%, per the SFC 2018–19.

The Statistics Canada 2009 Juristat provides a useful 2006 baseline: 14% of separated parents had shared living arrangements in practice — children spending equal time with both parents — while court-order data from the same period showed only about 10% shared custody orders. This four-percentage-point gap between informal practice and formal orders pre-dates the large post-2006 growth in shared-custody court orders, which reached 31% by 2018–19.

How contested vs. consent orders affect outcomes

The type of order — contested, consent, or uncontested — has a measurable effect on physical custody outcomes. According to Department of Justice Canada 2021 (SFC 2018–19), two-thirds of custody orders (66%) were decided on consent, 4% were contested, and 30% were uncontested (neither party contested). The breakdown by order type is striking:

In contested physical custody orders, sole maternal custody was awarded in 61% of cases versus 51% in consent orders; shared custody appeared in only 22% of contested orders versus 36% in consent orders. This means contested litigation produces meaningfully fewer shared-custody outcomes than negotiated agreements.

Legal representation strongly predicts outcomes. When only the mother had legal representation, sole maternal physical custody was granted in 83% of orders and sole paternal custody in only 1%. When only the father had a lawyer, shared custody was the most common result (42%), with sole paternal custody in 31% and sole maternal in 27%. When both parties had lawyers, sole maternal custody appeared in 52% of orders and shared custody in 41%, per SFC 2018–19 data from the Department of Justice Canada.

Representation rates have risen over time. In the SFC 2018–19, 81% of mothers and 61% of fathers had legal representation, with both parties represented in 51% of cases, only the mother in 30%, and only the father in 10% — up from 68% for mothers and 59% for fathers in the 2014–15 SFC data reported in JustFacts 2017.

Child support and financial arrangements after separation

Child support is a separate legal obligation from custody or parenting time, governed federally by the Federal Child Support Guidelines (SOR/97-175) and provincially through maintenance enforcement programs. The following figures are drawn from Statistics Canada 2014 (GSS Cycle 25, 2011) and Statistics Canada Juristat 2013 — the most recent national self-reported datasets at this level of detail.

The $900 gap between payor-reported ($5,100) and recipient-reported ($4,200) median payments suggests some degree of under-reporting or underpayment. Among those with written arrangements, judge-ordered arrangements (37% of all arrangements) had higher MEP enrollment (76%) than self-prepared arrangements not registered with a MEP (60%).

A 2025 Department of Justice Canada stakeholder survey on the Federal Child Support Guidelines (n=532 respondents, 75% family law practitioners) found that half (50%) of practitioners disagreed that the current shared-parenting time provision (Section 9) works well, 54% said it does not produce predictable support amounts, and over 80% agreed that proposed reforms would reduce parental conflicts and facilitate out-of-court agreements, per Department of Justice Canada 2025 (JustFacts).

What do child custody statistics miss?

National custody statistics in Canada have significant coverage gaps. The published figures — whether from Statistics Canada’s GSS or the Department of Justice’s court-file surveys — do not represent all Canadian parents who separate with children.

• Common-law separations are underrepresented. The 2011 GSS found that among parents who separated while married, court orders for primary residence existed in 52% of cases; for common-law separations, court orders existed in only 40% of cases. Five or more years after a common-law separation, 52% of children were still not covered by any court order for custody — versus 29% of children whose parents had divorced — according to Department of Justice Canada, drawing on the National Longitudinal Survey of Children and Youth.
• The 2017 GSS excluded key populations. Statistics Canada’s survey covered only parents whose most recent union ended in the previous 20 years and whose ex-partner was still living — excluding all arrangements formed through informal agreement with no written record. It also excluded households without telephone access and non-residents of the 10 provinces, meaning it undercounts First Nations, Inuit, and Métis families on reserves and in territories, per Statistics Canada 2021.
• Court-file data covers only six courts. The SFC 2018–19 was drawn from only six Canadian superior courts. Quebec — which processes family law through a distinct civil law system — and several other provinces were not consistently included, meaning provincial variation in custody outcomes is largely invisible in the national court-file data, per Department of Justice Canada 2021.
• Order modifications and informal variations are invisible. Neither the GSS nor the SFC captures how frequently parents modify orders, how often informal variations occur without court approval, or the outcomes for children in high-conflict cases versus cooperative arrangements. The gap between informal practice and formal orders has been documented since at least the Statistics Canada 2009 Juristat (14% informal shared arrangements vs. 10% court-ordered shared custody in 2006).
• Provincial variation is not captured. Because the SFC covers only a subset of courts and the GSS aggregates nationally, inter-provincial differences in how courts approach parenting arrangements remain undocumented at the national level.

What this means for Canadian parents

As licensed PIs, we see the practical implications of these statistics in custody-dispute investigations. The steady rise in shared parenting orders — from 10% of court orders pre-2006 to 31% in 2018–19, per Department of Justice Canada 2021 — means more parents are navigating complex co-parenting arrangements, and more opportunities for parenting-time disputes, compliance concerns, or undisclosed changes to a child’s living situation that may require independent verification.

The data also highlights where outcomes are most variable: contested orders produce significantly worse shared-custody rates (22%) than consent orders (36%). Parents who enter litigation without representation — or when representation is unequal — face outcomes that diverge sharply from negotiated agreements. These are the cases where documentation of parenting-time compliance, living conditions, or a parent’s daily environment most often matters.

For context on Canada’s divorce rates and family law landscape, see our divorce statistics Canada overview and the cross-national divorce statistics companion post. If you are navigating a custody dispute and need independent verification of parenting-time compliance or living arrangements, our child custody investigation service page outlines the investigative options available under Canadian law. Licensed · Insured · Bonded. Call +1 (888) 680-0036.