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Status and scope

• Bill C-223 would amend the Divorce Act, principally affecting divorcing spouses, children, their legal advisers and courts.
• The supplied text is the first-reading version, introduced September 18, 2025. The stated stage is second reading.

Short title

• The bill would be called the Keeping Children Safe Act.

Divorce Act amendments

Legal advisers and reconciliation

• Legal advisers acting for a spouse in a divorce would have to assess whether there are reasonable grounds to believe family violence poses a risk to safety or the spouse’s ability to negotiate a fair agreement.
• If so, they would have to take steps to implement an appropriate plan, ensure the family has a safety plan and inform the spouse of support services known to them.
• Evidence of a risk of family violence would be expressly included among circumstances where encouraging reconciliation or family dispute resolution may be inappropriate.
• The bill would repeal an existing reconciliation provision and change another so that court action to assist reconciliation is available on request by both spouses.

Children and parenting orders

• When assessing a child’s best interests, courts would have to consider evidence of family violence when evaluating people’s ability and willingness to communicate and cooperate. The bill also repeals an existing best-interests factor, though the supplied text does not reproduce it.
• Courts generally could not consider allegations that a spouse deliberately manipulated a child into becoming estranged from or resisting contact with the other spouse. An exception would permit consideration of relevant evidence of deliberate, repeated interference where the alleged interfering spouse has engaged in family violence and the evidence is not presented to support that prohibited allegation.
• Courts could not draw specified adverse inferences about family violence solely from circumstances such as separation, delayed or absent reports, no charges or an acquittal, inconsistent evidence, continued contact between spouses, or lack of visible injuries.
• Leaving a violent household for temporary housing or leaving the province with children, with or without notice, would not by itself be contrary to a child’s best interests.
• Courts could not presume that shared or equal parenting arrangements, or ongoing contact with each spouse, are in a child’s best interests.
• With both spouses’ agreement and other safeguards, a court could obtain a child’s views directly in writing or through a private interview in the presence of an amicus curiae. Disclosure to the spouses would be allowed only if the court considered it in the child’s best interests.
• A parenting order could not restrict the time a child spends with a closely connected spouse for the purpose of improving the relationship with the other spouse. Nor could it require reunification therapy or allow one spouse to consent to it without seeking the other’s consent.

Relocation

• Courts would have to consider whether family violence is a reason for relocation and the impact on the child of prohibiting it. They would also have to take account of family violence when considering likely compliance with family-law obligations.
• Courts would have to presume that the person proposing to relocate would move even if the child could not, and could not consider current local parenting-time arrangements.
• If the child spends most of their time with the person proposing relocation, the court would have to authorize it unless the objecting person proves both that relocation is not in the child’s best interests and that living primarily with the objector is.
• If the child spends most of their time with the person opposing relocation, the person proposing it would have to prove that relocation is in the child’s best interests.

Transitional provisions

• Divorce Act proceedings started before the amendments come into force but not finally disposed of would be decided under the amended Act.
• Where an earlier court decision relied on an allegation or previous finding of deliberate manipulation causing a child’s estrangement or resistance to contact, the new rules on such allegations would be deemed a change in circumstances for the specified variation provision.

The supplied text specifies no coming-into-force date or costs.