Your Ontario separation agreement, section by section — the seven parts and what goes in each.

Section one is the background. Your names, the date you married or began living together, the date you separated, and your children's names and birthdates. Plain facts that anchor everything that follows.

Section two is parenting. The schedule week by week, the holiday rotation, and who holds decision-making responsibility — the right to decide about school, health care, religion, and major activities. The 2021 changes to Ontario law replaced the word "custody" with "decision-making responsibility" and "access" with "parenting time": the same rights, in plainer language.

Section three is child support. Each parent's income, the monthly table amount from the Federal Child Support Guidelines, and how you divide the extras — childcare, post-secondary tuition, major activities, and uninsured health and dental costs over $100 a year.

Section four is spousal support. A figure or a range, how long it lasts, the reasons it applies, and whether it can be reviewed. Ontario uses the Spousal Support Advisory Guidelines (the SSAG), which give a low-to-high range rather than a single number.

Sections five and six are property and debts. For married spouses, the property section reflects the equalization of net family property — the even split of what each of you gained in value during the marriage, with the family home treated as fully shared. It covers the house, pensions, accounts, and vehicles, and then who is responsible for which loans, lines of credit, and cards.

Section seven is the general clauses: life insurance to secure the support, releases from each other's estate, a requirement to try mediation before court, and the binding-contract language. These are the clauses that turn a list of decisions into an enforceable agreement.

The structure above is genuinely standard. You could reproduce it from any decent template. What a template cannot give you is a child support figure that matches your actual income, a spousal support range that reflects the real gap between you, or the financial disclosure that stops the other side reopening the deal in a year.

The most common way an Ontario agreement gets set aside is one side later proving the other hid a significant asset or debt at signing. The second most common is one side showing they did not really understand what they signed. A template does nothing to prevent either. Honest disclosure and independent legal advice do.

That is why running the numbers and exchanging disclosure come before drafting, not after. Get those right and the document itself is almost mechanical. Get them wrong and the cleanest-looking template in the world will not save the agreement.

Draft it yourselves, then get independent legal advice. You and the other parent write the agreement using the structure above, then each pay for a single consultation with your own lawyer or paralegal before signing. This is the lowest-cost path — roughly $400 to $800 per side — and it works when the two of you can still talk and the finances are not complicated.

Mediation, then drafting. A neutral mediator works through the terms with both of you and then has the agreement drafted. You still each get independent legal advice before signing. This is the middle path, usually split between you, and it fits when you need a structured conversation to reach the terms.

Full representation. Each side hires a family lawyer who negotiates and drafts on your behalf. This is the most expensive path and the right one when assets are complex, income is being hidden, or the conflict is high enough that direct conversation is not realistic.