How to Make a Parenting Plan in Yukon

The Supreme Court of Yukon won't accept vague arrangements like "the kids will split time between both homes." Whether you're filing a consent order or heading to trial, you need a detailed parenting plan that covers every logistical scenario — and the Yukon's dual legal framework makes this trickier than in most provinces.

What the Court Requires in a Parenting Plan

A Yukon parenting plan must address five core areas to satisfy Supreme Court Rule 63:

1. Decision-making authority. Who makes major decisions about health, education, religion, and extracurricular activities? If it's joint, you need a step-by-step communication process for reaching agreement. If it's sole, the plan must specify the non-deciding parent's right to receive information directly from schools and doctors — a default entitlement under Canadian law unless a court explicitly revokes it.

2. Residential schedule. The exact rotation — not "alternating weekends" but which specific days, what time transitions happen, and who handles transportation. Common schedules include alternating weeks (7-7) for school-age children, 3-4-4-3 for ages 4-8, and 2-2-3 for toddlers and preschoolers.

3. Holiday and vacation division. How Christmas, Thanksgiving, Easter, school breaks, and summer vacations split between households. Standard approaches use alternating even/odd years or divide individual holidays into equal halves (e.g., Christmas Eve with one parent, Christmas Day with the other).

4. Communication protocols. When and how the non-residential parent contacts the child — typically specifying reasonable calling or video chat windows (e.g., 6:00-7:00 PM) to keep contact non-intrusive and predictable.

5. Dispute resolution. A mandatory sequence: direct negotiation first, then mediation through the Yukon Family Mediation Service, then court application only if mediation fails.

The Terminology Trap

Here's where Yukon parents get caught: the federal Divorce Act uses "parenting time" and "decision-making responsibility," but the territorial Children's Law Act still uses "custody" and "access."

If you're married and divorcing, your plan should use the federal terminology. If you're common-law, you must use the territorial language. Using the wrong terms on your consent order (Form 53) or statement of claim can trigger registry rejections.

Building Your Plan Step by Step

Start with the residential schedule — it drives everything else. Track actual overnights across a sample month, because the 40% threshold determines whether child support uses a standard calculation or a shared-custody set-off formula.

Next, map decision-making to specific domains. "Joint decision-making on everything" sounds fair but creates deadlock. Many workable plans assign education decisions to the parent in the school's community and health decisions jointly with a tiebreaker mechanism.

Add relocation clauses early. Under the Divorce Act, a parent who wants to move must provide at least 60 days' written notice with the new location, proposed schedule changes, and updated travel logistics. Building this into the original plan prevents ambiguity later.

Finally, include a right-of-first-refusal clause — if the residential parent can't be with the child for a specified period (often 4+ hours), the other parent gets first option before a babysitter is called.

Getting Your Plan Into a Court Order

For agreed-upon plans, you and your co-parent submit a joint consent order (Form 53) to the court registry. A judge reviews and signs it without a hearing — called a desk order.

For contested situations, the plan becomes part of your affidavit (Form 59) evidence. The mandatory Family Law Case Conference must be scheduled within 60 days of service, where a judge reviews both parents' proposals and pushes toward settlement.

The Yukon Child Custody & Parenting Plan Guide includes fillable worksheets for each of these components — decision-making allocation, residential schedules, holiday rotations, and communication protocols — designed specifically for Yukon's dual-framework requirements.

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