Custody & access

The birth certificate registration only contains information about the child's date and place of birth, and who his or her parents are. If you choose not to put the other parent's name on the birth certificate, that parent's rights and obligations towards the child do not change. The parent's obligation to pay child support for the child does not change, nor do his or her rights to custody, guardianship, and access.

However, if you are deciding whether to put the other parent on the birth certificate registration, it is important to get legal advice based on your circumstances and legal needs. See Who can help? for more information about how to find a lawyer.

See the BC Vital Statistics website for more information on filling out the registration form for a birth certificate.

My son let his wife have full custody, and my granddaughter's mother has been very difficult to deal with. She got the order through Provincial Court.

See the useful guide for relatives called The Child's Right to Love (PDF) on the People's Law School website, which discusses options for relatives who want to maintain a relationship with a child. These options include family court counsellors, mediation, conciliation, and going to court.

Some services that might help you are Provincial family duty counsel, LawLINE, or the Lawyer Referral Service. Or see the other services listed in Who can help?

If you or the other parent does not live in BC, standard family law rules will not apply. If this is your situation, your case is more complicated, and you should see a lawyer to get some advice. See Who can help? for how to find a lawyer. See also the fact sheet about interjurisdictional issues on this website. Or see the booklet Living Together or Living Apart: Common-Law Relationships, Marriage, Separation, and Divorce.

I am representing myself and I have found there are terms that I cannot find a clear and concise definition of. For example, costs. This is a minefield for the lay person! What costs? The costs of appearing in court? The costs paid to the lawyer to date? If it is a total of all legal costs, then how is it broken down?

In the Supreme Court or the Court of Appeal, "costs" refers to a court order that says that the losing party in a lawsuit must pay the legal expenses of the successful party. See our fact sheet about costs for more detailed information about how costs are calculated.

If you do not have an address for your separated spouse, you need to try and locate him or her. See the resources on JP Boyd's BC Family Law Resource (scroll down to "Starting an Action" and read the section called "find my ex?").

If you have tried our suggestions (above) for finding an address for your separated spouse but have not succeeded, you could apply to the court for an Order for substituted service. See our self-help guide on how to arrange for substituted service. See also the resources on JP Boyd's BC Family Law Resource (scroll down to "Starting an Action" and read the section called "substitutionally serve someone with legal documents?") for some suggestions on how to proceed.

For more information or advice about your situation, contact LawLINE.

No. If your spouse no longer lives in BC, you will have to make your application in Supreme Court, not Provincial Court. This is because Provincial Court applications cannot be validly served on a person outside BC.

Generally, you must serve documents on a spouse who lives outside BC the same way you would serve a spouse within BC. This is true whether your separated spouse lives in another Canadian province or territory, or in another country. See our self-help guide on how to serve Supreme Court documents outside BC (also available as a PDF in English and several other languages; see the Quick links at the right-hand side of the screen).

You can ask a friend or family member who lives near your spouse to personally serve documents for you, or you can hire a professional process server to serve the documents on your spouse for you. Or, if your separated spouse lives in a country that has signed the Hague Convention on the Service Abroad of Judicial and Extrajudicial Documents in Civil or Commercial Matters, you could choose to have the documents served on your separated spouse by following the procedures set out in that Convention.

If you want to hire a process server to serve the documents personally on your separated spouse, you can try to locate process serving companies where he or she lives using either the local yellow pages or the Internet. The fact that you have not seen your spouse in many years does not affect the requirements for serving documents.

I originally served my wife with the Writ of Summons and the Statement of Claim nine months ago, but did not take the next step of having an Affidavit of Service completed and filed with the court registry. This was because serving my wife with the court documents led to new discussions about trying to save our marriage. We have since agreed to move ahead with the divorce, but now I no longer have three copies of the Writ of Summons and Statement of Claim. Is the original service still valid, nine months later, or do I have to re-serve the documents? If I have to re-serve the documents, will the court registry give me copies of the documents I already filed, so that I can have them served on my wife? Or must I start from scratch, re-file everything, and pay the full amount again?

A Writ of Summons can be served within 12 months of the date it was filed with the court registry. This means you can continue with your divorce application process because you had the Writ served on your wife within that 12-month period.

Your next step is to have the person who served the documents on your wife complete an Affidavit of Service. See our self-help guide on how to serve documents and choose the Supreme Court option at the bottom of the page.

If the person who served the court documents on your wife is no longer available to swear an Affidavit of Service, you must have someone else re-serve the court documents on your wife. You can have the court documents re-served so long as this happens within 12 months of the date the Writ of Summon was filed with the court registry. The new server must then complete an Affidavit of Service. If you need additional copies of the documents that you filed with the court, contact the court registry.

If the Writ of Summons has not been served within 12 months of the date it was filed with the court registry, an applicant has two options. He or she can either:

• file a new Writ of Summons and Statement of Claim with the court registry (and pay another filing fee) or
• make a separate application to the Supreme Court to have the Writ of Summons renewed for another year, and then serve the renewed documents (this is a much cheaper option).

A service that could help you is the LawLINE. Or see the other services listed in Who can help?

I intend to apply to the Supreme Court to change a final divorce order made more than three years ago. I have received legal advice suggesting that I file and serve on the other party a "Notice of Intention to Proceed" before serving a Notice of Motion even though final judgment in my case has been granted. I searched for this form, but can't find one. Is there such a form or do I simply write a letter stating my notice of intention to proceed and serve it on the other party?

There is a Supreme Court form that you can use, either before or after a final judgment is granted. See our self-help guide called How to use a Supreme Court Notice of Intention to Proceed for links to a blank form, and information about when to use it, and how to fill it out and serve it on the other party.

Form 60 is also called an Affidavit. You can find one on our Court forms page, listed under Affidavit.