About this site

We at CPLEA built this site to uncomplicate the law for families.

We designed this site to be a go-to resource for family law in Alberta. We hope it is a safe space for you to learn about the law, understand your situation and figure out what to do next.

Who this site is for

If you are experiencing a family law situation or you work closely with people who experience family law issues, this site is for you!

Albertans with a family law situation

Family law affects everyone. You may be getting married, figuring out how co-parent after a separation, adopting a child or trying to divide your property during a divorce.

We know these situations can be challenging. We want to empower Albertans who are going through these stressful and highly personal experiences that have lifelong impacts.

If this is you, knowledge is power! Being informed can help you:

feel less stressed and more confident throughout the process
not be taken advantage of
make the best decisions for your situation

Justice navigators

Justice navigators are those who support Albertans experiencing legal issues, including about family law.

Justice navigators include:

court staff
court support workers
law librarians
legal professionals, including lawyers and paralegals
people who work in supportive non-profit or government agencies, such as housing, income support and women’s shelters
educators and librarians, including those in primary and secondary school
friends and families of those navigating a family law issue

If this is you, we built this site to answer your questions, as a tool for your clients and to keep you informed about the law.

Why you can trust this site

Informed by real people with real issues

To understand your needs, we consulted with Albertans, free legal clinics, government services, lawyers, librarians and more. We heard your concerns about accessing information about family law and built this site to address them.

Written by knowledgeable legal professionals

All content is written by lawyers with knowledge of family law. Content is accurate, objective and based in the law.

Designed for you

Warm design

Because family law situations can be overwhelming and chaotic, we chose graphics, colours and language that help create a calming and friendly space.

Plain language

Complicated legal jargon is hard to understand, even for lawyers sometimes. We try to make all content as simple as it can be. And when we have to use legal terms, we explain what they mean.

Empowering and actionable

We want you to understand the law and how it applies to you. We’ve broken down the information into bite-size, practical steps you can take to help yourself.

Updated regularly

The law frequently changes. We regularly update the content to make sure it reflects the current state of the law.

How we organized the content

Our goal is to share legal information that is easy to understand, helpful and, most importantly, actionable. That’s why you’ll notice each page of legal content is tagged at the top with one of three labels.

Basics

These pages are just that – the legal basics. Learn the who, what, when, where and why of a legal concept. If you’re new to family law, these pages are a good starting point as they provide foundational information that other pages build on.

There are seven “Basics” pages on this site:

Once you’ve read through the basics, you’ll be encouraged at the bottom of the page to take an action related to that information.

Hint: Look for the green asterisk beside these pages in the main menu!

Take action

These pages help you take action. The information will guide you through one or more steps you can take to deal with your situation.

For example, you can learn how to work with a surrogate, calculate child support, make a plan for how to co-parent, serve court documents and much more.

Once you understand what steps to take, you’ll be encouraged at the bottom of the page to take next steps. We also highlight potential road blocks or issues that can come up as you take action.

Hint: Most of the titles for these pages start with verbs!

Dig deeper

These pages dig deeper into specific legal topics. The information will help you both understand the legal concept and how to apply it.

For example, you can learn about the best interests of the child principle, what happens if Children’s Services is involved, how to communicate with the other person and much more.

Once you understand the topic better, we’ve highlighted potential road blocks or issues that can come up. At the bottom of the page, we also identify related topics that may be of interest to you.

Our process

Gathering information

We started this project by consulting with various family law stakeholders, including:

family lawyers
government programs
social service agencies
legal clinics
Alberta Law Libraries

We heard your concerns loud and clear, including that:

people were frustrated with “the system” and wanted relief
family law issues are complex and can be time-consuming – many people felt stuck and didn’t know how to get started
many people face multiple access barriers
existing information about family law was scattered across the Internet
existing information about family law wasn’t actionable

Creating the site

Armed with an understanding of what our users needed, we got to work.

We worked with a web development team who is passionate about social issues and who wanted to make the information as accessible as possible for Albertans.

Our process involved content creation by a family lawyer, plain language review by CPLEA staff, editorial review by an external content strategist and a final check by several family lawyers to make sure we got the content just right.

Special thanks to the following for their work on this project:

Sticks & Stones, website design and development
Rachel Penner, content strategist
Emma Benarzi, legal writer
AJEFA, our partner in making this site bilingual
Family law professionals from across the province who reviewed the content on the site and gave it their final stamp of approval

This process took over two years to complete, but we are very proud of the final result.

Measuring impact

We want to hear from you! How are we doing? What can we work on?

Because this site is for you, please share your experience using it. Complete a short survey by clicking the button below. You can also answer the question at the bottom of each page with legal information to let us know if the content on it was helpful.

Complete the survey