Wong – Tax Court of Canada engages in a detailed weighing exercise to determine that two ex-spouses were shared custody parents

After initially denying the Canada child benefit (CCB) claims of the taxpayer in full (on the basis that it was her ex-husband who primarily fulfilled the care responsibilities for their son), CRA assessed her on the basis that they were “shared custody parents,” so that she was entitled to 50% of the CCB amounts.

In affirming that the taxpayer was a shared custody parent, Bocock J found inter alia that the son lived with each parent one-half of the time, that the provision of medical care was not as uneven as she claimed (e.g., he took his son to medical appointments and exclusively handled COVID vaccinations) and her exclusive provision and payment for various extra-curricular activities related to his view that “unregulated, unstructured play and home-centered activities were sometimes preferable given the son’s fairly young age”.

It is peculiar that the ITA administration of a routine personal credit may often require intricate determinations of fact.

Neal Armstrong. Summary of Wong v. The King, 2025 TCC 24 under s. 122.6 – shared-custody parent.