When a court is determining how much time each parent should spend with children, section 37(2) of the Family Law Act states that in order to determine what is in the best interest of the children the court must consider the children’s views unless it would be inappropriate to do so.
Section 211(1) states that a court may appoint a person to assess the views of a child.
Section 211(2) states that a person appointed must be a family justice counsellor, a social worker or another person approved by the court and must not have any previous connection with the parties. The personal appointed will provide an opinion and/or recommendations regarding how parenting time will be shared.
A different approach is to ask the court to order a Hear the Child report either by the consent of both parents or by a court order pursuant to section 202(b) of the Family Law Act. In this report the interviewer does not provide an opinion or make recommendations, they simply record the child’s views verbatim and relay those views to the court. These reports can be obtained more quickly and at less cost than a views of the child report.
There is a roster which provides names of people who have been trained to do Hear the Child reports called the B.C. Hear the Child Society.
Family Law Act, [SBC 2011] CHAPTER 25
www.bclaws.ca/civix/document/id/complete/statreg/11025_01
