It usually starts small. A stomach ache on exchange day. A tantrum in the driveway. Then the visits get shorter, then rarer, and eventually a parent is saying the sentence that fills family courtrooms across Ontario: “I bring them, but I can’t force them to go.” Here is the uncomfortable truth the law has settled on: yes, within reason, you can. And if you don’t try, the consequences can be serious.

The starting point: a parenting order is not a suggestion

When a court orders parenting time, it has already decided that time with the other parent is in the child’s best interests. That decision belongs to the judge, not to the child, and not to the parent the child lives with. The Ontario Court of Appeal made this explicit in Godard v. Godard: once parenting time is ordered, a parent cannot leave compliance up to the child’s wishes. The parent has a positive obligation to do everything reasonably possible to make the order work.

Courts understand that children, especially teenagers, have minds of their own. But the caselaw draws a sharp line between a child’s genuine, independent resistance and a household where refusal is quietly permitted, or worse, rewarded.

What “doing everything reasonable” actually means

The decisions that followed Godard have filled in the picture of what a court expects from the parent whose home the child is refusing to leave:

• Require, don’t just invite. A parent does not have to physically force a screaming child into a car. But as the court put it in S.V. v. T.I.C., they must require the child to go, the way they would require attendance at anything else non-negotiable.
• Use ordinary parental tools. Smart v. Belland lists them: incentives for going, consequences and withdrawn privileges for refusing, staying at the exchange until it happens. If a child loses their phone for skipping school but faces nothing for skipping a visit, the message is loud.
• Speak with one voice. Telling children the visits matter while letting them hear that “no one will make them” go, or discussing the litigation and the other parent’s alleged faults in front of them, undermines the order as effectively as open defiance.
• Why the child resists is not a defence. In Phong v. Nguyen, the court held that it did not matter whether the child’s reluctance was genuine or the product of one parent’s influence. The parenting order existed precisely to repair the relationship, and the law expects parents to correct their children’s behaviour, not defer to it.

The pattern courts scrutinize hardest is the one described in Scrivo v. Scrivo: a parent who claims to merely respect the children’s wishes, while the evidence shows the children’s refusal has been shaped, consciously or not, by that parent’s own hostility. Leaving the relationship “to the choice of the children,” the court observed, is exactly how it withers.

Contempt of court: the last resort with real teeth

When the pattern persists, the other parent can bring a motion to have the non-complying parent found in contempt of court under Rule 31 of the Family Law Rules. The Supreme Court of Canada set the test in Carey v. Laiken. The moving parent must prove, beyond a reasonable doubt, that:

1. The order is clear and unequivocal about what it requires;
2. The other parent actually knew about the order; and
3. They intentionally did, or failed to do, what the order requires.

Two features of that test surprise people. First, the parent does not need to have intended to defy the court; intentionally permitting the non-compliance is enough. Second, because the standard is proof beyond a reasonable doubt, sloppy record-keeping loses these motions. Dates, missed visits, messages, and third-party observations from supervisors, therapists, or schools are what carry them.

Ontario courts add an important caution from Hefkey v. Hefkey: contempt in family cases is a remedy of last resort, to be used sparingly and only after conferences, enforcement motions, and therapeutic routes have failed. Judges want to see that you tried everything gentler first. But where the breaches are sustained and the softer tools are exhausted, courts do make the finding, and the consequences can include fines, compensatory make-up parenting time, and substantial costs awards.

Police enforcement clauses: exceptional, but real

Section 36 of the Children’s Law Reform Act allows a court to direct police to locate and return a child who is being unlawfully withheld from a parent entitled to parenting time. Courts treat this power with great care. The leading case, Patterson v. Powell, calls police enforcement an exceptional remedy, granted sparingly, and never intended as a long-term, on-demand enforcement tool. The concern is obvious: no one wants officers in a child’s driveway as a routine part of their week.

But exceptional does not mean unavailable. Ontario courts have granted time-limited police enforcement clauses, commonly six months with an option to renew, where a clear pattern of non-compliance has made orders meaningless and everything else has failed, including where enforcement was needed to make court-ordered reunification therapy viable. And as the court noted in Ross v. Holmes, a police clause does not itself add stress to children, because it only ever operates if the adults fail to comply. The order’s real power is usually that it never has to be used.

If you are the parent being refused

• Document everything, immediately. Every missed visit, every late exchange, every message. Patterns win these cases; anecdotes do not.
• Keep showing up. Attend every scheduled exchange even when you expect refusal. Your consistency is evidence, and its absence will be used against you.
• Escalate deliberately. Letter from counsel, then a case conference, then enforcement or contempt. Courts reward parents who climbed the ladder rather than leaping to the harshest remedy.
• Move quickly. The single biggest mistake is waiting. Every month of no contact makes the relationship harder to restore and the eventual remedy more drastic.

If your child is the one refusing

Take the resistance seriously, but understand what the law expects of you: active, documented effort. Set the expectation that visits happen, apply the same consequences you would for any other refusal, keep your feelings about your ex away from the children, and get professional help involved early, whether counselling for the child or a referral to reunification support. If there are genuine safety concerns, the answer is a motion to change the order, not quiet non-compliance. A parent who unilaterally suspends court-ordered time, however sincere their worry, is the one standing in the contempt spotlight.