Grandparents' Rights in Ontario: CLRA Sections 21 and 24, No Leave Required

Ontario's Children's Law Reform Act lets grandparents apply directly for a parenting order or a contact order, with no requirement to first ask the court's permission, and the Act's best interests test names grandparents specifically. A widely repeated rule that Ontario parents cannot create "unreasonable barriers" to grandparent contact was real law between 2016 and 2021, but it no longer exists in the current Act.

Information last verified on 2026-08-16. This article has not yet been reviewed by a licensed lawyer.

This article covers grandparent contact and parenting order applications in Ontario under the Children's Law Reform Act, RSO 1990, c C.12, as currently in force. It does not cover the federal Divorce Act route, available only inside a parents' own divorce proceeding, or the general pattern across other provinces; for those, see grandparents' rights in Canada. It does not cover divorce procedure generally; for that, see divorce in Ontario. It does not cover grandparent custody or guardianship, a different and higher legal bar than contact.

Who Can Apply, and Under What Order Type

Ontario's Children's Law Reform Act, as amended by the 2020 Moving Ontario Family Law Forward Act, uses two order types: a parenting order, covering decision making responsibility and parenting time, and a contact order, covering time or communication with a child by someone who is not seeking parental decision making authority. Section 21(1) reserves parenting order applications concerning parenting time and decision making responsibility to "a parent of a child." Section 21(2) and 21(3), by contrast, state plainly: "Any person other than the parent of a child, including a grandparent, may apply to a court for a parenting order respecting decision-making responsibility with respect to the child," and "Any person other than the parent of a child, including a grandparent, may apply to a court for a contact order with respect to the child." Grandparents are one of the small number of applicant classes the Act names by word, not merely by implication.

No leave of court, no requirement to ask the court's permission before filing, appears anywhere in section 21's text. That is a structural contrast worth stating plainly: a grandparent applying under the federal Divorce Act needs leave under section 16.5(3) before a contact application can even proceed, but a grandparent applying under Ontario's own statute does not face that threshold step. Alberta's Family Law Act takes the opposite approach, requiring most grandparents to obtain the court's leave under section 35(2) before applying at all; British Columbia, like Ontario, imposes no such requirement. See grandparents' rights in Canada for how that compares across the other provinces and territories. One caveat: section 27, "Effect of divorce proceedings," states that "if an action for divorce is commenced under the Divorce Act (Canada), any application under this Part in relation to decision-making responsibility, parenting time or contact with respect to a child that has not been determined is stayed except by leave of the court." In practice, this means a pending Divorce Act proceeding between the child's parents automatically stays an undetermined CLRA application, including a grandparent's, unless the court grants leave to continue it separately. A grandparent whose adult child is mid-divorce should raise that leave question directly with a family lawyer rather than assume the CLRA application can proceed on its own timeline.

Filing itself carries a documentary requirement the federal Act does not impose in the same way. Section 21(4) requires the application to include an affidavit with a proposed plan for the child's care and upbringing, information about the applicant's past or current involvement in family proceedings, including under the Child, Youth and Family Services Act, 2017, or in criminal proceedings, and any other information relevant to the section 24 best interests factors. Sections 21.1 and 21.2 add a further requirement specific to parenting order applications by a non-parent: a recent police records check and a children's aid society records search must be filed with the application.

Best Interests Under Section 24: Grandparents Are Named

Section 24 sets out the same best interests framework used across Ontario's family law statutes, current since the 2020 harmonization with the federal Divorce Act. Section 24(3) lists the factors, and paragraph (b) states the court must consider "the nature and strength of the child's relationship with each parent, each of the child's siblings and grandparents and any other person who plays an important role in the child's life." The federal Divorce Act's own best interests factor list, at section 16(3)(b), names grandparents in nearly identical language, so this is not unique to Ontario; New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and several other jurisdictions surveyed in this cluster also name grandparents in their own best interests factor lists. The genuine structural difference between Ontario and the federal Act is the leave requirement discussed above: the federal Act requires a grandparent to obtain the court's permission before applying at all, while Ontario's section 21 does not.

The remaining section 24(3) factors mirror the federal list: the child's needs and stage of development, each parent's willingness to support the child's relationship with the other parent, the history of the child's care, the child's own views to the extent it is appropriate to ascertain them, cultural, religious, linguistic, and Indigenous upbringing, care plans proposed by the parties, the ability and willingness of each person to meet the child's needs and to communicate and cooperate, and family violence and its impact, with sub-factors at section 24(4) mirroring the federal section 16(4) list. Section 24(5) excludes a person's past conduct from consideration unless it is relevant to that person's parenting time, decision making responsibility, or contact with the child. Section 24(7) applies the same test to interim orders and to variations of an existing order, so a grandparent seeking to change an existing contact arrangement faces the identical best interests analysis as a first-time applicant.

The 2016 "Unreasonable Barriers" Rule No Longer Exists

A specific and genuinely common trap sits here, and it is worth stating directly: the current Children's Law Reform Act contains no rule against a parent creating "unreasonable barriers" to grandparent contact. That rule existed, but it was repealed, not layered onto the current Act.

In 2016, the Ontario legislature passed the Children's Law Reform Amendment Act (Relationship with Grandparents), 2016, Bill 34, receiving royal assent on December 8, 2016. Confirmed against the bill's own legislative record, it made three changes to the then-current Act, which at the time still used "custody" and "access" terminology rather than today's "decision-making responsibility," "parenting time," and "contact": it amended the old section 21(1) to name grandparents among those who could apply for custody or access, amended the old section 24(2)(a)(i) best interests factors to require consideration of the child-grandparent relationship, and added a new section 20(2.1), which read: "A person entitled to custody of a child shall not create or maintain unreasonable barriers to the formation and continuation of a personal relationship between the child and the child's grandparents."

That section 20(2.1) provision is gone. A direct comparison of the current consolidated Act against the 2016 amendment shows the 2020-2021 Moving Ontario Family Law Forward Act recodification, which replaced "custody and access" with "decision-making responsibility, parenting time, and contact" across the whole statute, did not carry a section 20(2.1) equivalent forward. Current section 20 addresses equal entitlement to decision making responsibility and has no anti-barrier clause for grandparents or anyone else. The naming-grandparents changes from Bill 34 did survive, renumbered and rewritten into the current section 21(2)-(3) and section 24(3)(b) discussed above, but the standalone rule against "unreasonable barriers" to grandparent contact was superseded, not preserved. A source describing a current, freestanding "no unreasonable barriers to grandparent contact" rule in Ontario is describing law that was in force between 2016 and 2021, not the law in force today. A grandparent facing restricted contact today has the section 21 application and the section 24(3)(b) best interests factor available; there is no separate statutory anti-barrier claim to raise alongside it.

What the Courts Have Said: Chapman v Chapman and the Limits of What This Article Verifies

The deference principle Ontario courts apply to grandparent contact disputes traces to the Ontario Court of Appeal's 2001 decision in Chapman v Chapman, 2001 CanLII 24015 (ON CA). The court overturned a trial order granting grandparent access, and, as quoted in a Department of Justice Canada legal analysis of the case, held that "in the absence of any evidence that the parents are behaving in a way which demonstrates an inability to act in accordance with the best interests of their children, their right to make decisions and judgments on their children's behalf should be respected, including decisions about whom they see, how often, and under what circumstances they see them." That holding is well supported: two independently reviewed sources, including the Department of Justice paper, quote the same language and the same outcome.

Legal commentary describes later Ontario Superior Court decisions as building a multi-part test on top of Chapman, sometimes summarized as asking whether a positive grandparent-grandchild relationship exists, whether a parent's decision would imperil it, and whether the parent acted arbitrarily, and describes a further Ontario Court of Appeal decision as formalizing that framework into a two-part deference-then-best-interests structure. This article did not verify that language against the underlying judgments. The only sources reached describing those specific tests were secondary commentary, not the primary case text, and the primary judgments could not be opened this review. Rather than restate a numbered test as settled Ontario case law, this article states only what is verified: the Chapman deference principle is real and controls how courts approach a parent's decision to restrict grandparent contact, and the grandparent carries the burden of showing why a court should override that decision. Readers who see a specific numbered "test" cited elsewhere should confirm it against the actual judgment or with a current family lawyer before relying on it; this article deliberately does not repeat it as verified law.

Resolving a Grandparent Contact Dispute Without Litigation

Ontario's own court-facing guidance describes family dispute resolution options, including mediation, available to parties in a family law matter generally. This article did not verify a specific mandatory mediation step that applies to grandparent contact applications in particular, so none is stated here as a rule. What can be said generally is that a section 21 application is a full court proceeding, with legal costs on both sides and the possibility of a costs award against an unsuccessful applicant, and that mediation, a parenting coordinator, or direct negotiation with the parents can resolve many disputes without reaching that point. See grandparents' rights in Canada for the broader practical-reality discussion of cost and family relationship risk that applies in Ontario as much as anywhere else.

Disclaimer

This article is informational only and is not legal advice. It covers grandparent contact and parenting order applications in Ontario under the current Children's Law Reform Act, RSO 1990, c C.12, as of 2026-08-16. It does not cover the federal Divorce Act route, the general pattern across other provinces, or grandparent custody and guardianship applications, which involve a different and higher legal test than contact.

It does not restate the specific numbered case-law tests some legal commentary attributes to Ontario decisions after Chapman v Chapman, because those could not be verified against the underlying judgments for this article. Confirm current requirements and case law directly with a lawyer licensed in Ontario before relying on anything described here for a specific situation.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can grandparents apply for custody or access in Ontario?

Grandparents can apply for a parenting order, covering decision-making responsibility and parenting time, or a contact order, under sections 21(2) and 21(3) of the Children's Law Reform Act. Ontario's current terminology is parenting order and contact order, not custody and access. No leave of court is required in the text of section 21.

Do Ontario grandparents need the court's permission before applying?

No. Unlike the federal Divorce Act, section 21 of the Children's Law Reform Act does not require a grandparent to obtain leave, the court's advance permission, before filing an application for a parenting order or contact order.

Is there still a rule against "unreasonable barriers" to grandparent contact in Ontario?

No. That rule, former section 20(2.1), was added in 2016 and removed by the 2020-2021 recodification of the Children's Law Reform Act. It does not appear anywhere in the current Act. Sources describing it as current law are describing 2016-2021 law.

Does Ontario's best interests test mention grandparents specifically?

Yes. Section 24(3)(b) requires the court to consider the nature and strength of the child's relationship with each parent, each sibling, and grandparents, matching the federal Divorce Act's own section 16(3)(b), which also names grandparents; several other provinces do too.

What has to be filed with a grandparent's parenting order application in Ontario?

An affidavit with a proposed care plan and information about past family or criminal proceedings, under section 21(4), plus a recent police records check and a children's aid society records search, under sections 21.1 and 21.2, for applications concerning decision-making responsibility.

What did Chapman v Chapman decide?

The Ontario Court of Appeal overturned a trial order granting grandparent access, holding that absent evidence a parent is failing to act in the child's best interests, the parent's decisions about who the child sees should be respected. It remains the leading deference principle applied to grandparent contact disputes in Ontario.

Is there a formal legal test Ontario courts apply beyond Chapman v Chapman?

Legal commentary describes later decisions as building a multi-factor framework on top of Chapman, but this article could not verify that language against the underlying judgments, and does not restate a numbered test as settled law. Confirm any specific test cited elsewhere against the actual judgment or with a family lawyer.