The Survey of Family Courts (SFC) is a long-standing online survey that documents detailed information about the contents of court orders and separation agreements. This snapshot of data collected between 2018 and 2019 focuses on custody and access, legal representation, and the relationship between legal representation and custody arrangements by parents’ gender.
This report includes data from six participating superior courts located in five jurisdictions across the country: Manitoba, Saskatchewan, New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island, and Yukon. Coders manually input data from court files into an electronic survey administered by Justice Canada. The survey collects data that are disaggregated by gender. It also captures whether or not parties were in a same sex relationship; however, due to the small sample size, this report does not provide a separate analysis of same sex couple data. The survey predominantly covers parents who were married and later divorced, and as a survey of court data, does not collect information on separating parents who do not use the court system. The findings of this report cannot be generalized beyond the participating courts, nor can any causal linkages be made regarding legal representation and case outcomes.