Two courts hear family matters in Calgary. Start by identifying which court hears your application and checking the location and instructions for your attendance.
Two courts hear family matters in Alberta, and the division between them is not a matter of preference.
The Court of King's Bench of Alberta has sole jurisdiction over divorce and the division of property. It also hears support and parenting matters.
The Alberta Court of Justice hears applications for child and spousal support, parenting arrangements, private guardianship, and all child protection cases. It does not have jurisdiction to decide divorce applications or claims to property rights arising from a relationship breakdown.
So if a divorce or a property claim is part of what you are asking for, the Court of King's Bench is the court that can decide it.
The Calgary Courts Centre is at 601 5th Street SW, Calgary AB T2P 5P7, as listed on each court's location page read on September 23, 2026. Confirm your hearing location before attending.
The Court of King's Bench of Alberta sets this out in its Family Focused Protocol notice, for the route that notice calls the Regular Family Process: an action must be commenced and served before any party can seek interim or final relief by way of a Regular Family Process application. So the action comes first, and the requirements belong to the moment a party asks that court for something.
The notice says those requirements bind all parties seeking relief from the court in a family proceeding, unless the matter is urgent or a waiver has been obtained. The requirements themselves come from the Government of Alberta's Family Justice Strategy, and there are four of them.
Where the parties do not agree on any issues, an alternative dispute resolution process must be attempted before the court's assistance is sought. The attempt has to have been made within the past six months, it has to cover the issues you want to bring to court, and a Participation in ADR form is filed.
This one applies where children under 18 will be affected by the proceeding. The certificate is filed with a court clerk and has to be retaken if it is more than two years old. A respondent's deadline is different and runs from service: they file within 14 days of the date they are served.
Financial disclosure is mandatory for all parties filing an application for child support, spousal support, adult interdependent partner support and family property division. It takes the form of a Financial Disclosure Statement with its supporting documents.
This applies to people who have dependent children and are without a lawyer. The counsellor is not a lawyer and cannot provide legal advice.
None of the four is unconditional. A party who cannot complete one makes a Request to Waive/Defer Mandatory Requirements, and the listed reasons include concerns about family violence, technological barriers, language barriers and being unable to locate the other party.
The waiver is an application, not a substitute. The court's own notice treats a package that needs one as non-compliant and says the waiver proceeds by way of a desk application first.
What follows is the Court of King's Bench of Alberta's process, set out in its Family Focused Protocol. It is not the process for every family matter heard in Calgary: the Alberta Court of Justice hears its own family applications.
Under the Protocol an application is made through one of three streams - a regular family process for families seeking final decisions on all issues, including non-urgent contested interim relief; a desk process; and an urgent process.
On the regular stream a family is assigned a Mandatory Intake Triage Justice, who meets the parties and deals with interim needs. That same justice becomes the family's Case Conference Justice for the steps that follow.
After the action is commenced and served, the intake package is filed and served, and a Case Management Officer reviews it for compliance before an intake conference can be scheduled. A package that is not compliant is returned - rejected outright where the non-compliance is significant, or sent back with the corrections to make.
A judge is not booked until the materials pass that review.
The intake conference itself is a hearing before the assigned justice, in a courtroom and on the record. The justice may grant interim relief, make procedural orders, order reports, appoint counsel for a child, help the parties work out what evidence a meaningful settlement conference needs, or engage in mediation. Part of its purpose is to prepare the parties for a settlement conference.
That settlement conference is normally before a different justice - not the intake justice - unless the parties consent and that justice agrees to conduct it.
None of what follows is automatic. The parties are directed to a settlement conference unless all issues were resolved at the intake conference, and in exceptional circumstances, at the sole discretion of the intake justice, they may be directed to trial without a settlement conference at all.
Where a settlement conference does not resolve everything, the notice sets out three routes rather than one. The parties may prepare a consent litigation plan order; or meet with Resolution Counsel to prepare a litigation plan order, which the assigned Case Conference Justice must approve; or attend a case conference with that justice.
Only for a matter that is proceeding to trial is a pre-trial conference scheduled with the assigned Case Conference Justice, in advance of the trial date.
Whether a matter reaches a judge in regular Family Chambers is itself decided. The Court says those dates are scheduled by an intake or case conference judge, through the urgent process, or through processes excluded from the Protocol, after considering whether the matter is appropriate for a dispute resolution process or for a desk application process. Some applications are decided on the papers.
Check the Court of King's Bench's current scheduling information for the applicable hearing arrangements.
A family lawyer advises on which court has jurisdiction over what you are asking for, on which requirements your matter attracts, and on what an intake package has to contain to survive the compliance review. Where a requirement cannot be met, the lawyer prepares the waiver application.
The Government of Alberta runs two services that answer questions of their own. Its Court and Justice Services Contact Centre provides information about safety supports. Its Family Resolution Hub helps people work out which route a family matter takes.
Neither is run by or connected to THEBIL Law.
Contact THEBIL Law to discuss which court your matter belongs in and the questions you want to address about getting there. You can submit a consultation request at any time, and the office will be in touch to arrange a meeting.
THEBIL Law, 5920 Macleod Trl SW Ste 720, Calgary, AB T2H 0K1, Canada. Call 403-457-3128.